Wind

Cruising by the historic Sallie Barber Mine on this morning's skijor.

Zipping on by - wheeee!

The prior photo is about the cleanest I footage I have from the entire outing this morning. What do I mean by that? Well, it has been ridiculously windy across just about the whole state of Colorado starting yesterday, through last night and into (and through) today! Come along to see the "wind impact" on this morning's skijor outing.

To begin with, we started our skijor on the road leading to the trailhead due to a downed tree across the road. This wasn't really a problem as the road was snow covered (albeit very hard packed); but it made for an interesting start to the outing:

Starting the skijor on the road to the trailhead because of a downed
tree across the road behind us.

The real impact, though, was downed trees on the trails. Take a look at this interesting obstacle to get by. In this case we had to dip down into the deep snow off trail to the left, go around the trees and then come back up onto the trail. This was easy for Jack & Rudy to do; but you try it on skis!!!!

Uh-oh, trail completely blocked by downed trees!

A little further along and more downed trees; but at least this one hit a tree on the other side of the trail and has a gap to the right that I can fit under!

Slow down, move to the right and DUCK :)

Total tree obstacles for this morning's short outing: 5 - 1 blocking the road to the trailhead, 2 blocking the entire trail (requiring us to dip off trail in deep snow to get around) and 2 crossing the trail but with enough clearance for me to duck under.

Even when the trail was clear of downed trees, it was littered with wind-blow tree debris!

A nice open stretch as Jack & Rudy are catching air but notice
all the wind-blown tree debris on the trail.

Today's video highlight is, of course, Tree Debris Skijoring! Come along and watch as we are still able to open up the throttle but there sure is a lot of tree debris to navigate around and slow my skis!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Despite a day of tree debris and downed trees, a great time was still had by all!

"We still had a blast!" declares the happy kids.

I mentioned two of the impacts of the ridiculous wind: downed trees and tree debris littered trails. The third impact? Well, the wind chill was approaching -20 F (yes, 20 degrees BELOW zero). As a result, the wimpy human cut the outing short this morning: 5.2 miles traveled with 400 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 20 MPH.

2023/2024 Season to Date: 60 days on the trails covering 507.3 miles with 48,500 feet of elevation climbed.