Trail Breaking Workout

Today was a real workout as we found ourselves breaking trail in 5-12 inches of fresh snow for 10.5 of our 10.9 mile outing! Wow - what powder!

Gliding along Boreas Pass Rd - breaking trail in about 5 inches at this point. Wheee!

Today's plan was the following:
1) Take a non-standard (i.e., seldom used) 8 mile route to connect Baldy Mountain to Bakers Tank on Boreas Mountain. We completely expected to be breaking trail most, if not all, of this route.
2) Drop onto popular (and heavily used) Boreas Pass Rd at Bakers Tank and sprint down "fast packed Boreas" for 3 miles to the trailhead.

So, that was the plan: 8 "hard miles" and then finish with 3 "easy miles". Well, here's what happened:

Initially all was as expected - breaking trail for 8 miles connecting Baldy to Boreas
the long way.

Still "on plan", powering through what was supposed to be the last deep section as we
connect onto Boreas Pass Rd. You can see an existing track on the road in front of
us, this was to be the "easy track" down...

On Boreas Pass Rd. The track is a little narrower than you usually find on popular Boreas;
but it is still a nice track to follow fast.

Less than 1/4 mile after connecting with Boreas and what is this - we've caught a pair of
snowshoers trekking down. We'll just pass and continue on the Boreas fast track, or
so we thought...

Pass the snowshoers and "Whoa! Look at this - untouched 7 inches of powder on Boreas
Pass Rd!" It is so rare to find Boreas untouched this far down and so rare to break trail
on Boreas this close to the trailheads! I kept expecting to find another set track around every
corner; but, nope, we broke trail on lower Boreas in 5-10 inches for over 2.5 of the 3 miles
from Bakers Tank - wow, what unexpected fun!

Arriving at the Boreas trailhead. All the snow you
see in the photo is "blowing snow" as the winds
were really picking up. This "track of footsteps" is
the "existing track" we found near the trailhead. Not
much of a "track", you could really say we broke
trail for 10.9 of 10.9 miles and be pretty accurate!
What a fun Siberian Trail Breaking Workout!

Day 3 of our "mini Iditarod" covered 10.9 miles (as expected) with 850 feet of elevation gain (again, as expected). But, the unexpected: breaking trail in 5-12 inches almost the entire route - Woo!

Our stats after 3 Iditarod days: 33.5 miles and 3450 feet of elevation climbed.

GPS report of the top speed and distance covered in today's outing. You
know if our top speed is only 15 MPH then we have been in deep snow
all day long!

Dark Start

We had an early day on the trails today. We arrived at the Boreas Winter trailhead before sunrise and used our headlamp to navigate the path until we got into the open moonlight and eventually into the early dawn sunlight.

Headlamp is off - we are now "skijoring by moonlight".

At the trailhead, it was pretty dark and the headlamp was necessary to illuminate the path. You need to have a lot of confidence in your skijoring partners to trust them to safely follow the trail in such darkness. But, that is Max & Zorro - I have the utmost confidence & trust in their sleddog abilities to follow and maintain the trail anywhere!

A visual progression of our early day on the trails is below:

At the trailhead - focus the headlamp on the white butts and follow the Siberians
up the trail.

Out of the thick trees and into a little bit of moonlight to assist the headlamp, which
is still centered on the Siberians as I follow their lead on skis.

Eventually ... Sunrise! We are so far up Boreas by this point that it is a single track ski
trail. Everyone hop in line as we continue along.

And, then, a little further up and we are laying fresh tracks in 3-6 inches of snow!
It did not snow overnight, but the strong winds on Boreas have created this layer of 3-6 inches
to plow through.

The sun has finally come over the mountains to light up the day; but we were about 10 minutes
from returning back to the trailhead when we got our first set of shadows on the trail.

This was "day 2" of our "mini iditarod" and we covered 10.7 miles with 1150 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of roughly 20 MPH.

Our total stats after 2 days: 22.6 miles and 2600 feet of elevation climbed.

Top speed and distance covered for today's outing.

Iditarod Start

A great day covering 12 miles skijoring on the dog-sled/snowmobile trails around Good Times Adventures!

Sprint-joring along the South Fork trail of Swan Valley Road - zoom!

Today is the start of the Iditarod in Alaska so it is also the start of our "mini Iditarod". Max & Zorro have entered the Dogs Across America Iditarod Challenge where we intend to skijor as many days & miles as we can during the dates of the actual Iditarod. Should be fun to see what our little "2 dog team" can do :-)

We had a great start today as we covered roughly 12 miles on the fast trails using both the Middle Fork and South Fork trails of Swan Valley Road.

Getting some nice "sprint speeds" going along the Middle Fork trail.
[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Trotting along the trail, enjoying a nice layer of fresh snow on the trail and
pretty snow covered trees all around us.

Continuing to zoom along the trails - airborne sprinting Siberians.

At our "far point" before starting back to the trailhead - Max rolling one of his
patented snow angels to quickly cool off first. Zorro looking on to say, "Really?
How are we going to make it to Nome if you keep rolling snow angels?!?"

Our tally for Day 1 of our Mini Iditarod: 11.9 miles, 1450 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of almost 21 MPH.

Speed & distance summary from the GPS.