New Trail

Laying fresh tracks through a large grove of aspen tress - wheeee!

Pretty shot of the snow covered aspen grove as Jack & Rudy
tow me along.

This morning was our first ever skijor of the Spring Creek Trail in Steamboat Springs. I've known of this trail for years but never skijored it because it is usually very busy and packed. But, there was significant snow overnight and the roads were a mess this morning. I figured the wintery conditions would keep others away while Jack, Rudy and I thoroughly enjoy skijoring in harsh conditions. Well, success, we did not see another soul on our outing until we finished back at the trailhead! Yay!

I knew this trail was popular for cross country skiing. But, what I did not know until this morning is that the trail is closed for elk preservation after a few miles. Bummer...

"We'd like to go find some elk!" states the silly kids wondering if we
are going to climb around this closure gate.

This closure came along way too soon for Jack & Rudy. If we simply turned around and went back, our outing would have only been on the order of 4ish miles! So, instead, we went back & forth redoing a bunch of nice stretches of the trail. It's always fun to reuse the track you set on the way out on the way back!

Tucked tightly into the track we set on the way out during the way back.

Unfortunately for the camera, it was snowing all outing long and the snow was a little on the wet side. As a result, snow & water kept collecting on the camera and leading to blurred footage. I wiped the camera clear frequently; but it got blurry again within a minute or two. So, today's video highlight is snow blurred skijoring behind fun Jack & Rudy. Oh, the gate you see us go by in the beginning of the video is NOT the "elk closure" gate in the photo above. This gate is just to prevent people from trying to drive Spring Creek in the winter. This is a dirt road in the summer open to cars and it's amazing how many people will try to drive summer only roads in the winter and get stuck - thus the gate to keep cars out.

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

New trail, same end of run treats fun from atop a nice snow wall:

"That was fun, but wish we'd found some elk!" says the happy kids.

A fun outing but a little disappointing that the "elk closure" gate was so close to the start for our typical skijor outings. Self powered humans, of course, would really enjoy this 4 mile cross country ski trail but Jack & Rudy need a lot more; thus our decision to repeat a lot of the trail along the way: 7.3 miles traveled with 1000 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 20 MPH.

2023/2024 Season to Date: 89 days on the trails covering 748.1 miles with 72,400 feet of elevation climbed.