McKeever A And B Quick Tour
:date: 2025-03-10 15:36 :tags:
McKeever Cross Country Ski Trail is about 12.5 miles (20km) from our house. Yesterday my wife and I went there and skied the main A loop. We've been having thaw/freeze cycles and we went there when the snow would be sensibly forgiving but not yet mushy and filled with puddles. I wondered if I could do the whole A loop just double poling. That means there is no help from engineered friction on your skis keeping you from sliding backwards. This is what the pros are doing these days for long "classic" races like the Vasaloppet. These dudes can do this at 25kph for 90km (here is an example of what that looks like).
Yesterday I confirmed that, yes, I could complete this course with frictionless skis. Today I went back. This time early in the day before the heat softened up the tracks. This was a very different experience! It was ridiculously fast and also filled with debris exposed from the melt off. It was pretty sketchy really and I'm relieved I had the skill to pull it off.
I had thought about doing the C loop too but it has at least six more very steep crazy drops and I was getting a bit nervous about the condition of the trail. Still, for A and B, this will probably be the fastest I ever get around them since any faster would be very hard to keep it together. If you watch the video, you'll see several times I come very close to getting hit in the face with an unborn baseball bat still growing in its tree.
This was definitely one of my most exciting half hours on skis and I'm glad I got it on video!
Oh, in the video I mention that I saw a wolf on my way to go skiing. You can see him in the distance crossing the road from right to left. This was taken between my garage and my mailbox.
