Had a great run today with just enough breaking trail and groomed trails to suit every ones needs. I left behind about 40lbs of weight (extra dog food) just in case we had to break some major trail, which we did.I pushed the whole team seeing how they would do but they just kept on going and asking for more.
Boreas, Thani, Hermes and Remus are the main players in all of this. Remus could go an extra 20 miles on top of what we did and the other boys are rock solid. Calypso isn't sure she wants to pull the whole time so I'm not sure what is going on with that. I'm focusing on moving her up in the team to see if that helps her enthusiasm but if she doesn't want to work I'm confident she can make a great leader. Shes got the speed and brains for it. And if she just wants to sight see she can do that too! : )
We ran into quite a few literal snags, as you can see from the photos, that brought us to a good solid stop. I will need to go back and cut these down to size so it will be safer for all next time. The light was fading and we aren't 100% sure of this trail yet so it wasn't worth it to stop and do the extra work.
But so far what we did find was very promising. At our turn around point I had a good laugh when I saw the Drop Zone sign (see first photo). The dogs thought this was pretty exciting!
After breaking through all that trail I decided to let them run along the road since it was so quiet and would be a nice break. I had anticipated more unbroken trails down the road and wanted to make their work a bit easier.When we came to the point where we came off the trail to check out the road signs I was messing with my hat and headlamp and didn't notice the leaders dash off back into our unbroken trail!
Ive gotten them so set on hard work that they didn't want anything to do with an easy road, they wanted to get back to work and pound that trail down to make it easier the next time we came down that way! : )
After getting them back on the road we started picking up speed and little pup Gaea was feeling her oats and running up to Juno in lead and biting her as they ran. A clear sign that she had too much energy to spare!
When we got back on the trail we had some ups and downs with a very large 'down' that I wasn't expecting. In trusting my team Ive gotten a bit less paranoid about staying on so when the sled went down I lost my grip and didn't think much of it. Since the sled was upright and we finally found some broken trail again they continued on despite my calls to whoa. I walked down the trail thinking they were going to stop, which they did for a minute, but then continued on.I called over and over to Juno who tried to turn the team around, and could have if Ichabod hadn't been up there with her insisting that they go straight. Seeing that it may be serious that they weren't going to stop this time I decided to get running and right then they stopped. Guess they were letting me know that if I'm going to walk up to them they will be giving me extra incentive to get my butt moving!
The rest of the run was pretty uneventful. After we got into the main areas of travel the trails were packed and not very challenging. All the bumping and sharp stops on roots has left my sled bridle a bit worse for wear. That will need changing very, very soon but other than that my trusty Klumb toboggan worked right through it all!
Total Miles: 22.3
Max Speed: 18.2
Moving Average: 6.8
Time Moving: 3 hours 18 minutes
Time Stopped: 1 hour 4 minutes
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