I sat out the biggest snow weekend we've had so far this year with a head cold so it was time to push that aside this morning and go for a dawn patrol. No takers unfortunately for the 6:30am call to meet at the trailhead so I went it alone. When one has to get to work by 9am, one must go it alone most of the time (with my friend Spot of course)...so it be.
I took out the tele skis today and although i felt cooler and the turns looked prettier...OH MY GOD they're heavy!! And they're they're pretty light for tele skis. Not to sound like a weight weenie (I kinda am) but with the added 4lbs, and my fatigue from my week long head cold, i felt like i was towing a sled with a keg of beer. And those BD Glide-lite skins? Crapola, more like Glide-like-Shite skins. Nothing can compare to Mohair skins. Now that I've gone with Mohair, i cannot go back. I had no idea...
A coyote's tracks led all the way up the trail, starting way down the road actually. A big nighttime foray for that canid. Perfect 'direct registry' placed this as a wild canid, no dog would ever walk this perfectly in the snow. Once again, I imagined the Monkey showing me the way to fresh tracks, having been reincarnated as a coyote wandering the lands she never got to explore as a dog.This place gets pretty used up on the weekends because of its proximity. But I was the first car there this morning. I followed the skin track up from yesterday and made my way to where we went last week to the day but seeing it more or less tracked out, I kept going up. Up and left i made my way above treeline and noticed yet again a lack of wind in one of the windiest places in the county. Usually devoid of snow from winds whipping it to the east, there was a good fresh 8-10" of new so I crested to top, ripped skins and did my first tele turns of the year on a low angle wide open powder field. And for this lucky guy, that is how my day started.
4 comments:
I suspected this might be your work. There was air of beauty to the skin track up, and the line down had a blissful aesthetic to it that caught my attention. Not your normal skin track or run down. I was the second one up, and I was a jealous of the line. Hope you are well Meriwether.
Wow Whit. That sounds like a perfect start to the day. If you had a dog who could do it, would you take them skiing with you?? I've been curious about your thoughts on that.
They make transmitting-only avi beacons for dogs now. Before I was told that skiing was a forbidden activity for me, we were planning to buy those for our dogs.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your beautiful Dawn Patrol!
I know the Monkey was with you, and you had to obey. Funny how you can write one sentence and my tears start...I think because I barely knew her (compared to the Guppies or MyBunny)I miss her the most.
KB- (Long answer to your questions here. And I'm defining "backcountry" as going and skinning up hills and peaks off established trails and then skiing down.) So...I'm not sure I would take a dog into the backcountry just for safety reasons alone, for me and for the dog, even though I think the dog and I would have a great time. I am a willing participant in the risk I subject myself to, but I do not feel comfortable exposing any of my past or current dogs to such risk. I also like to keep my dogs on-leash since I don't work with them enough to keep them near me, and having a wandering dog in the backcountry is IMO irresponsible at its worst, and at the least a very dangerous proposition since they don't know safe travel techniques in avalanche terrain.
Avy beacons only help find the (likely) dead dog, it does not prevent the dog from causing an avy and potentially both of you getting caught. Once they or you get caught, getting found is only one worry, the trauma induced from the slide is more likely going to cause death or serious injury than being buried.
So, I prefer to stay on packed trails - like with skijoring - where we work together to ski and they have a job to do. Although it looks and sounds very appealing to have a dog on a backcountry ski tour (like all the photos in the recent Mtn Gazette) for me it's not a risk i want to take with any of my dogs. Not just with avy's but with getting skewered by buried objects since they punch thru the snow deeper than skis do, and they can hurt themselves by tearing ligaments from post-holing at speed down the hill - which does happen more often then people think. But a nice tour that includes packed trails and some rolling terrain for them to get their yahoos out...sure! We do and have done that a lot on the local MTB trails that get packed by snowshoes, skis, groomers, &/or snowmobiles. Thanks for the question! - M
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