POW WOW

It was a Pow Wow of Powder far back in French Gulch this morning!

Breaking trail in 8+ inches of fresh, fun powder.

We are in the midst of a wonderful mid-April snowstorm the last few days. The snow has been wet, sticky and heavy below 10,000 feet elevation, so we have spent our days higher. Between 10,000 and about 10,500 feet, the snow has been a bit wet but not too much. Above 10,500 it has been Champagne Powder in April!

The further we went today, the deeper it got. Max & Zorro were practically swimming in snow at points along the way:

Swimming or jogging? Hard to tell :-)

We did a loop around the last meadow in French Gulch (instead of our typical out & back), so we were breaking trail the entire circle. What fun!

Our "out direction" was along the trees across the meadow to the right. We were having so much
fun that we came back on the left side of the meadow to continue breaking trail.

Why do we love skijoring French Gulch so much? Moose!

Pausing to watch a big brown moose body move through the trees across the meadow.
Always fun for Max & Zorro to get the scents, sounds and sights of moose.
Always fun for the human when the moose is far away!

So happy this mid-April storm has brought the French Gulch Trail back to life:

"So much fun - let's go find the moose!" exclaim the happy pair at a quick pause on the trail
this morning.

Happily "slowed by snow" on our outing today as we were breaking trail deep in French Gulch for miles: 7.9 miles with 700 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 17 MPH.

2014/2015 Season to Date: 125 days on the trails covering 1077.3 miles with 113,750 feet of elevation climbed.

Yay Snow

A mid-April Powder Day - Woo Hoo!

Love looking at Max & Zorro towing me quickly around corners! Zoom zoom!

The morning's outing ranged from "lightly snowing" to "dumping snow"; but it was snowing all morning. Yay Snow!

Dumping snow as we can barely see 10-20 yards down the trail. Yay Snow!

The best thing about this storm? It brought the French Gulch Trail back into use! We had declared French Gulch dead about 2 weeks ago as the lower portion of the trail was down to dirt. But, the storm from yesterday into today brought French Gulch back to life, look at this beautiful terrain in upper French Gulch:

Breaking trail again on one of our favorite trails. Woo Hoo!

A great time had by all:

"Yay Snow!" exclaim my partners at our turnaround point in French Gulch.

Today's video clip is a tribute to "Yay Snow" as it shows the pattern for most of the outing - the GoPro was unable to remain free of blurring from falling snow for more than a minute all day. Yay!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

A great storm bringing French Gulch back to life: 8.2 miles with 800 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 19 MPH.

2014/2015 Season to Date: 124 days on the trails covering 1069.4 miles with 113,050 feet of elevation climbed.

Good, Bad, Ugly

The good, the bad and the ugly on the trails today at Swan Valley...

"A mix of conditions; but we still had a GREAT time!" exclaim the happy pair watching
me kneel to get equipment out of my backpack.

We had "the good" as we were able to open up on straightaways where we could see snow covered ground far in front of us:

A beautiful section of trail to "open it up" - wheeee!

Yet, we had to slow down when we entered any blind curve in the trail in case the other side of the curve had an unwelcome surprise. We would enter many such curves on "the good" only to find "the bad" waiting for us on the other side...

Yikes - what an unwelcome surprise on the other side of a blind curve!

Carefully traverse a section of "the bad" and we would find a nice section of "the good" to cut loose on again:

Towing the human up a slight lift of "the good" on the trail - so fun when good!

But constantly slowing to carefully traverse "the bad":

Eek - exposed ground all around with a narrow ribbon of death to skijor through!

Finally, the ugly....

Yuck!

A quiz for you on "what is wrong" with the last photo:
   (a) only a trace of snow over ground!
   (b) you can see a ski pole but no ski tips!
   (c) all of the above.

Well, the answer is (c). We had to take off the skis to hike final 3/4 mile of trail today. I have a nice backpack to carry the skis; but it is such a shame to have to use it.

A day of cautious skijoring due to "trail surprises" and hiking on foot to complete the day: 7.2 miles with 800 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 16 MPH.

2014/2015 Season to Date: 123 days on the trails covering 1061.2 miles with 112,250 feet of elevation climbed.