Early for Crust

We started this morning's skijor before 7am. Why? Well, the early bird gets the firm Spring Crust still available early in the day atop Vail Pass!

Beautiful, firm and endless Spring Crust atop Vail Pass as far as the eye
can see! Wheeee!

After an initial climb from the trailhead parking lot, we were treated to the endless Spring Crust and wove our way every which way atop Vail Pass this morning. While most of the top is wide open with very few trees, there is one half mile cool corridor through dense trees on each side of you. I love flying along this corridor behind Jack & Rudy. It was so much fun, we did it twice as we could turn right at the end of the corridor and come back up the other side of the trees until we got to the top of the corridor again.

Second pass through the fun tree corridor as you see my ski tracks from the
first pass under and next to Rudy.

Today we got a trifecta of entertainment from Rudy and a double feature from Jack. 

First item: with warm May temperatures, the kids are always ready to roll snow angels to cool off during any pause along the way:

Rub a dub dub, rolling to cool their jets :)

Second item (for Rudy), repeat for always rolling Jack: woos and angels at another short pause during the outing:

"Turnaround, roll around!" goes always rolling Jack.
"Turnaround, woos abound!" sings wooing Rudy.

If you look at the sky in the previous photos, you see it was a pretty overcast morning with lots of cloud coverage. But, for the last 10 minutes or so of the outing, the clouds parted and we got some great footage in the sun. This brings a conclusion to Rudy's trifecta and Jack's double feature:

The hover huskies catching air with cool lighting and shadows from the sun.
Rudy's trifecta: rolling, wooing, hovering.
Jack's double feature: rolling, hovering. Fun kids!

Today's video highlight will go along with the prior photo as it is always so much fun to watch Jack & Rudy run in the sun. Come along and watch the fun!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Back to the trailhead and the creative kids were able to find a snow wall to climb for end of run treats! This trailhead parking lot gets plowed all winter so the snow walls last pretty long into the Spring melt:

"Ready!!!" says my focused and happy pals perched up on a wall for
end of run treats.

A wonderful Spring Crust early morning atop Vail Pass: 9.2 miles traveled with 1000 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 22 MPH.

2023/2024 Season to Date: 150 days on the trails covering 1266.4 miles with 125,800 feet of elevation climbed.