Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Dredge

With the very low snow year so far this year in Fairbanks, I have been limiting myself to skijoring either out of our house (on a flat road, then a flat trail) or Creamer's field. The other day I tried the dogmusher's trails out of Creamer's field, but vowed to not go back until we get more snow, since several times I thought I was going to break my skis on big tussocks. No wonder all of the dogmushing races out of the Dogmusher's hall have been canceled so far this season due to lack of snow.

One of these days, I will make it to the river.

But even out of our house, it is not a bad little ski. At the end, there is a view of a dredge. And in the bright sunshine these days, it can be very beautiful.


I had Saphira hooked up all the way to the dredge viewpoint, so when I switched her for Cooper, she was very happy and on the way back, she elected to stay way ahead of us just to make sure that she didn't have to work any more. I love the view of the frosted hillside behind her.


The dredge is located on this pond here, but surprisingly it does not show on the satellite image that is currently on google maps: the dredge visible in that picture is I think the second one that is off the left side in this image:

The case of the missing dredge... Those things are big, and I would have thought difficult to hide.

And, in case I am wondering in a few years how I dressed for these short 1h skis with the dogs (temp around -10F this afternoon in this location):

On the head, a very ugly but warm and windproof hat with earflaps, and a neckgator over the cheeks. On the body, long sleeve shirt and a sweater, with a windbreaker over the top. On the legs, tights with a windproof layer over them. On the feet, warm socks in the boots, and boot warmers over the boots. And on hands, mitts.

1 comment:

Matt Heavner said...

I saw a weather statement that there was a correction to the Fairbanks December official snow. An incorrectly recorded entry caused a revision downward of .1" (and this was almost ~1% correction factor) -- ouch! When you need every tenth of an inch, things are somewhat desperate! ACK!

Great trip out to the dredge!!