:date: 2025-04-17 20:52 :tags:
The afternoon temperatures have been getting warmer and warmer. Most of the snow on our property is gone. There are however some pockets of it left not too far away if you know where to look. Today I brought Mya up to McKeever Hills XC Trail early in the morning to see if there was enough cold and snow for some skijoring and yes!
This (2025-04-17) is incredibly late in the season to be able to find a 2km stretch of skiable trail (I imagine I could have skied the full A and B loops too). This was Mya's first visit here so she was a bit nervous about it all. She did great running the 2km shortcut route but she only wanted to take the lead when she sensed we were getting back to the parking lot.
When she moved to Michigan, she was pretty apprehensive about snow but now she'll generally prefer walking (and especially pooping) on snow to other terrain. Today the conditions were good for her - sun, just under freezing, low wind, compact snow, and not too icy. I'm very proud of Mya's fortitude and I'm very pleased with the opportunity for late season skiing.
Note that it's generally frowned upon to bring dogs to McKeever during the ski season which is why I'm just taking her now. I was careful to only stay on the short loop and come at a time when the snow was cold and compact enough that she would leave no prints. It's the same general idea as for skate skiing — it's fine if it's not going to leave bad marks all over a groomed course for skiers wanting to use the classic tracks. The tracks haven't been set in weeks and everything I've done there has been invisible. Last week (4-12) when I was skiing there by myself, I found huge post holes where walkers of a big dog had stomped all over the trail around the cabin in the heat of the day. They probably didn't know any better and/or never suspected someone would still be skiing this late into the season. At least it wasn't as bad as the fat idiot who carved a drunken fat trench with his fat tire bike around the short A loop a couple of weeks ago. McKeever is far enough out of the way that casual clueless people don't just stumble in and the trail conditions are usually treated pretty respectfully.