Thursday, January 26, 2012

Yes We Do Have Snow Here!

Beautiful day on the trail
Well, despite all of the doom and gloom in the news with regard to the "winter" weather this season we have had decent conditions here in Lake Elmore. We certainly haven't had the type of winter we have in the past here and there have been many dramatic temperature swings but I have been able to make due with what we have received. I typically start grooming as soon as we have an inch of snow on the ground. This may seem silly but I find that it does begin to smooth things out and fill in the dips and ruts on the trail. My groomer does take a bit of a beating but luckily it's a pretty rugged piece of equipment and so far with the exception of a few broken sheer pins it has held up well. I have had to groom more this winter than in any winter past to create a safe surface for sledding. We have received most of our snow fall in one inch increments and with rain/sleet/snow every seven or eight days it's a real challenge keeping a nice surface. We have finally gotten to where we have about five inches of hard packed base on the trail though and that should be able to hold up to pretty much anything Mother Nature throws at us; for the time being at least. If things continue the way they have been I suspect we will have an early spring here in Vermont. As warm as it has been this winter I won't be surprised if it's 70 degrees at the end of March.

Sled view, beautiful snow!



Pax on a hike this fall
On other fronts; all of the dogs are doing very well this winter. We are feeding a combination of raw and a new kibble this year. The kibble is called Inukshuk and the dogs seem to be doing very well on it. It's a 35% protein, 35% fat food and the love the taste so there have been no problems with them eating. I'm also feeding them chicken every other night as well as their usual moose or venison stew for breakfast every day. We have the same group of dogs there that we had all of last winter so everyone is well settled in at this point. That makes things much more enjoyable for me. The only new addition is our latest puppy Pax who came here this fall. Pax is just over eight months now and has already been out for a few runs with the team. He loves running with the big dogs but won't get many miles in this year. We will wait until next year when he is going on two before we let him run each day. I'm very excited to see how much he enjoys running and look forward to many years of enjoying his company out there!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

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Dogsledding