BrownStone Chinooks

Except for the last 2 miles, today I had my second best ever dogsled run. (It will take quite a ride to beat running a team of Karen Yeargain's racing huskies in the Ocochos). After dropping Dave off at the ski area so he could work with the Jr. patrollers, I headed on over the pass to Crescent Lake. I had never been there but had heard there were nice 2 and 4 mile loops. This area is a snowmobile mecca but being Superbowl Sunday I figured the traffic would be lighter. As it turned out we had the freshly groomed trails to ourselves. I grabbed a trail map from the warming cabin, hitched up the dogs and off we went.

The dogs ran strong for miles...

and miles. All I had to do was hang on.

Then we came out of the woods to a road and RR track. Neither were on my map. Yup, I was lost so I anchored the sled and walked up to talk with the crew working on the ties. They told me to follow the road and that the sno-park was about a mile plus away.

Our trail was no longer groomed but not too bad for the first 1/4 mile or so.

By this time the temperature was in the 40s. We were getting hot and tired in the punchy snow. At one point the dogs decided running on the road would be the better option only to get tangled in a small tree  and each other when I insisted we stay on the trail.

Every driveway and side street was an abrupt drop off the snow bank onto pavement, carry the sled and back onto the now very diminished trail.

Within canine smelling distance of the sno-park the dogs had had enough of the rough trail and headed cross-country in the deep snow.

Our great adventure ended with a 6 foot drop straight down to the parking lot.

After loading up, I drove back to the RR tracks. It was exactly 2 miles. I do plan to make this my playground but first need to find a better map: 1) to figure out how far we actually ran. My guess is 8-9 miles and 2) to find the actual looping trails.