Bluebird Morning

What a beautiful bluebird morning to take in the views while being first tracks on a freshly groomed nordic trail!

Jack & Rudy catching air with stunning view ahead and to our right.

You might wonder if I ever use the classic ski tracks set on most nordic trails (the two parallel tracks in between Jack & Rudy in the prior photo). The answer is "very rarely" as putting both my skis in the classic tracks makes me a frictionless object with no braking ability. Jack & Rudy are trained to go as fast as they want if they feel no friction from me. So, you can see by the angle of the gangline in the prior photo that I am outside of the classic tracks behind Rudy.

Occasionally, though, I will put one ski in the classic tracks. I only do this on uphill, flat or very gentle downhill grades. With one ski in the track I can shift my weight to that leg and Jack & Rudy floor it. Conversely, I can shift my weight to the ski out of the classic tracks to provide some friction to let my pals know to slow down a bit. Fun teamwork!

Compare the angle of the gangline in this photo to the prior. 
I have my right ski in the classic track for speed and my left ski out of
track for braking & control.

We were flying around the "dogs allowed" trails at Breckenridge Nordic Center and running way ahead of schedule. This is usually the case on these fast nordic trails. As a result, we usually turn around multiple times to redo fun stretches of trail. Everybody ready to do that last fast stretch again?

"Yep! Ready! Let's floor it again!" says the happy pair.

Wait.... What was that last photo? A trail turnaround with an upright Jack & Rudy? Shocking. Never fear, we had multiple turnaround points to redo sections of trail. Most turnarounds were the usual from the silly kids:

"Turnaround! Roll Around!" goes the snow rolling goofs doing their
typical turnaround antics.

Now onto our video highlight from the morning. Come along as we start this clip being first tracks on a recently groomed side trail. Then, about 35 seconds into the clip and we transition right onto the heavily used main trail. As you can see, Jack & Rudy can fly being first tracks or 10th tracks on groomed trails :)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

In case the video was too fast behind the speeding kids, here's a cool frame from the video as we are about to transition from the side trail to the main trail:

Flying into the right transition to the main trail perpendicular to
the trail we are currently on. Zoom!

Beautiful bluebird morning with a super bright sun to illuminate our end of run treats party:

"Ready!" says the happy kids from atop a short snow wall.
Wow, that is one BRIGHT sun in the top center!

Another zipping fast day on groomed nordic speedways: 10.3 miles traveled with 1100 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 24 MPH.

2023/2024 Season to Date: 87 days on the trails covering 733.5 miles with 70,700 feet of elevation climbed.