Service Road

Riding the Siberian Tow Rope up the Walton Peak Service Road - wheeee!

Powerful kids! Fun time!!!

Temperatures at Walton Peak did not get below freezing last night and were approaching 40 F when we started this morning's outing. I was hoping our usual early morning start would let us abandon set trails and skijor the firm Spring Crust. But, it was not cold enough for long enough overnight to re-establish the crust from the previous afternoon. So, what to do? Well, easy, there is a summer service road that goes all the way to the communication towers at the top of Walton Peak. Snow packed on a service road maintains ski-ability much longer than a crust over meadows of shrubbery. So, today's skijor was an out & back to the top of Walton Peak using the service road the entire distance. The results? Well see for yourself in today's wonderful photos and video:

Catching air coming down from the tip top of Walton Peak!

Now come along and watch the video counterpart to the prior photo. All the yellow poles you see are marking the service road, so it is pretty easy to stay on trail and not accidentally drift off road and punch through the soft crust. Jack & Rudy are, of course, perfect at following the occasional "right" and "left" I call out to keep us on road. Fun, fun kids!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

For distance, every time we encountered a really nice stretch of snow covered road, we would turnaround and redo it. Jack & Rudy understood what was necessary to get distance when you could not rely on the crust :)

Second pass along this nice stretch of the service road.
As usual, Jack & Rudy have swapped sides from their typical configuration
to enjoy the trail repeat from a different perspective :)

Of course, repeating sections of the road means turning around. Well, we all know what Jack & Rudy do with turnaround events :)

Turnaround! Roll around from the snow rolling sillies.
Talented Rudy getting a mouthful of snow during his roll.
Talented Jack looking like a yoga professional!

It was fast and fun all the way to the finish by using the Walton Peak Service Road:

Running fast to the end of the outing as the end of the road is just ahead
where it intersects Highway 40. But notice all that exposed water in the
upper right of this photo. The season is quickly winding down.

We didn't get to do our usual springtime crust skijoring; but the service road provided a great alternative, right guys?

"Oh yes, we had a BLAST!" states the happy, happy kids awaiting
end of run treats.

It was a wonderful late May skijor via the Walton Peak Service Road: 9.3 miles traveled with 1000 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 23 MPH.

2023/2024 Season to Date: 155 days on the trails covering 1310.5 miles with 130,200 feet of elevation climbed.