Nordic girl, Nordic dogs

dogs posing with the 2002 Olympic flagpole in the background.

Missy, the happy Nordie!

tired pups ~ post skate.

Thankfully we have gotten a little bit of snow over the last week and a half.  Although it's been raining in the Salt Lake Valley with each storm, the mountains have gotten quite a bit of snow (4 feet?) but we are still at about 70% of our snowpack.  And compared to the stellar snow-year that we had last year (when I was in Nevada and Wyoming, unfortunately) we have about half of what we had last year at this time.

The recent snow has fallen on an ice crust layer, so the backcountry avalanche danger has been high.  What does this mean for me?  Unfortunately, no backcountry skiing.  I'm afraid of avalanches.  Really afraid.  And I wouldn't say that it's ignorance that makes me afraid of them, but I do recognize that my backcountry skills could be a lot stronger, so I tend to stay away when the danger is moderate to high.

So what else does that mean for me?  It means the dogs and I are still on the trails, running, and also on the loipe: the cross country skate track.  The loipe in Park City was pretty good last week, but several days of warm-sunny weather had tufts of grass sticking out through the snowpack.  So today I took the dogs up to Snowbasin.  They only had about 3k of track groomed, but man were the conditions nice.  Short but sweet, smooth skating. 

I had to meet my sister-in-law up at the Denny's in Tremonton (she lives in Pocatello, and Tremonton is about half-way in the middle) to do some legal paperwork.  I decided that since I was going to be in the neighborhood of Snowbasin anyway, I would check out the loipe there.  I don't think I've skated there in probably at least 6 or 8 years.  It's changed some, but for the better.  And best of all, dogs are welcome.  There were many happy dogs on the Snowbasin loipe today.

If I could spend everyday nordic skiing on conditions like they were today, I would be a happy girl.  And the dogs would be happy nordic dogs as well.