If Only

Look what we found today:

Breaking trail above the abandoned Warriors Mark Mine. It sure was nice snow up high...

If only that last picture was representative of the whole outing... If only... Here's most of what we found:

Nice bright sun. Nice untouched trail. But very shallow snow in the mid section of Indiana Creek.

Yikes - ice and rocks. Most of the ice could "hold a husky", but the human would break right
through. The recurring rocks just under the snow made for a challenging outing.

Our plan for the day was to tour around the trails of Indiana Creek. We (mistakenly) assumed the snow from last weekend was enough to make these trails skiable. Oh what a mistake... These trails are very rocky and more like mountain bike trails than jeep trails. We didn't have nearly enough snow for most of the route to safely skijor down without catching and falling on a rock. So, the modified outing:

(1) Skijor up Indiana Creek to the ghost town of Dyersville - taking note that this trail was possible to ski up (carefully) but was not a trail we could take down.

(2) Continue from Dyersville up and past the abandoned Warriors Mark Mine - oh what great conditions we had up high! 

(3) Attempt to connect down from the shelf above Warriors Mark to the opposite side of Indiana Creek (opposite side from our route up), hoping the conditions were better on the other side.

(4) Quickly discover the conditions had too many exposed rocks for downhill skijoring. Off with the skis, load them on my backpack and hike around Warriors Mark for 30 minutes looking for a skiable path down.

(5) Give up on Indiana Creek, put the skis back on and skijor up to Boreas Pass Rd.

(6) Skijor down Boreas to Bakers Tank.

A lot of "backcountry exploring" (on & off skis) to learn that last weekend's storm did not dump enough snow on the technical trails to make them skiable in any down directions. Bummer...

Stats of the Outing: a moderate 7.4 miles (taking the skis off sure slows us down :-) with 2000 feet of elevation gain. Nice elevation gain as we kept thinking, "it must get better higher!" - well, we were right about the "better higher" but wrong assuming "there must be at least one skiable path down".

Exploring Dyersville Ghost Town ... Boo!

Zorro says, "this is great!"

Thursday morning found us skiing to explore the historic ghost town of Dyersville.

The town of Dyersville was inhabited in the late 1800s/early 1900s to work the nearby Warriors Mark Mine. Our goal this Thursday morning was to ski, photograph and perceive both Dyersville and the Warriors Mark Mine. Skiing a success... Photos a success (see below)... Ghosts? No - boo!  ;-)

The route was an interesting contrast in terrain.

1. The first 2.4 miles was a hard packed, uphill & well traveled cross country ski trail - the Indiana Creek winter trailhead up the Indiana Creek trail until the right turn to Dyersville.
2. The next 0.5 miles was exhilarating! As soon as we turned off the main trail onto the path to Dyersville, we were met with deep & untouched powder - Max, Zorro and I trailblazing the path to & through Dyersville and up to Warriors Mark Mine.
3. The snow was so deep in sections that I lost "touch with ground" - that is, multiple times I drove my ski pole into the snow to help propel us upwards and my arm & pole drove straight down past my foot, never connecting with solid ground! Yes, that is the length of my arm plus the length of the ski pole in depth and I never connected with solid earth!
4. The next 0.5 miles was the return (in the same deep powder) from Warriors Mark Mine back to the main Indiana Creek trail.
5. The last 2.4 miles was, again, the hard packed & well traveled trail to Indiana Creek winter trailhead. Except this direction was downhill (the elevation delta over this section is about 1000 feet)... Hard packed, occasionally steep and attached to 2 Siberian Engines - yikes, this was a test for my intermediate skiing skills!

Vital Stats: 5.8 miles total; 2hrs 5 min travel time; 93 minutes moving time (lots of time stopped exploring Dyersville & Warriors Mark); 3.8 MPH moving average (that 1 mile of deep/deep powder really slowed our average!); 14 MPH top speed.

The first abandoned cabin of Dyersville.

Continuing on to see more of Dyersville.
Those tracks in front of us are RABBIT TRACKS!

A water crossing to another cabin of Dyersville.
Note the narrow "snow bridge" to the left - this was our path over the ice cold, fast running stream.

Starting up from Dyersville to Warriors Mark Mine.
Fresh, untouched and deepening powder!

The narrowing & deepening trail to Warriors Mark Mine.

Warriors Mark Mine.
The snow was waist deep in the "shallow sections" here.
I did not want to get too close to the mine for fear of what I could not see under the snow...