10 years ago on this date: a very young Zeena discovers the delight of eating fresh watercress! Whitewater State Park, SE Minnesota.

10 years ago on this date: a very young Zeena discovers the delight of eating fresh watercress! Whitewater State Park, SE Minnesota.

Climate may be changing, but the Minnesota State Climatology Office appears to be successfully holding back against changes in website design! https://climateapps.dnr.state.mn.us/index.htm

The Ides of March 2026 blizzard was a Goldilocks blizzard for us in the Twin Cities region: about a foot of snow, more or less. A good workout to clear, and enough to provide a nice base for skiing over formerly bare ground. Over in the UP of Michigan they […] [Original post on mountains.social]

RE: https://mountains.social/@DaleTrexel/116222014019153514 Zeena and Tonttu, helping their human get in some early spring training:

Old, crusty ice is receding on the lakes, revealing autumnal memories from the previous year.

RE: https://mountains.social/@Paws2Trail/116121074291781556 Our most recent skijoring adventure, Feb-Mar 2026, collected into a single thread (hopefully) for your enjoyment.

Apologies to our followers, but we're about to try to chain together our recent vacation posts into a single thread to be pinned to our profile. Sorry if this creates a lot of noise in your timeline!

Skijoring vacation is over. We have returned to the land of brown and mud. 😢 But there were burgers along the way, which makes things somewhat better! 😋 #huskies #burgers #dogsofmastodon

Day #7, Last day of skijoring 😢 We started out hoping to do one last X-C ski on the groomed E end of the Banadad Trail, but the stick and twig situation was as bad as it had been at George Washington Pines the day before. We gave up after half a km […] [Original post on mountains.social]

A symbiotic relationship. Is it Mutualism, Commensalism, or Parasitism? #huskies

Each in his own world.

Day #6, X-C Skiing George Washington Pines This is the most dog-friendly and popular trail in the region groomed for skiing... but it's also multi-use, so there's a LOT of foot traffic. This shot is from the beginning of the 2 mile loop. Can you find the […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Not 100% clean on OPSEC.

Silent Sunrise Stalk #silentsunday

Day #5, Breaking trail on Forest "Road" 1310 Exploring new trails! Driving along the Gunflint Trail (Hwy 12) we noticed a side road with a wide plowed out area perfect for parking, but no snowmobile activity beyond. It looked perfect for us, especially now […] [Original post on mountains.social]

RE: https://mountains.social/@Paws2Trail/116145181557599126 For the Saturday Morning crowd!

Day #4, Grand Marais, MN and Lake Superior Warm weather meant sticky snow, so we chose to make this a Town Day, driving back down the Gunflint to Grand Marais. We explored the shore of Lake Superior out at Artist's Point, enjoying all the fascinating ice […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Day #3, Hok/Backcountry skiing on the ungroomed west end of the Banadad Trail. We knew this end of the trail was not being groomed this year, but we were curious to see what conditions were like anyway. Snow was definitely deep! But not too deep to dampen Zeena's sense of adventure!

Day #3, Hok/Backcountry skiing on the ungroomed west end of the Banadad Trail. We knew this end of the trail was not being groomed this year, but we were curious to see what conditions were like anyway. Snow was definitely deep! But not too deep to dampen Zeena's sense of adventure!

Cooking fajitas: Northwoods style!

RE: https://mountains.social/@Paws2Trail/116134506475468504 For the morning crowd! (In the eastern hemisphere)

Day #2, Nordic/X-C skiing on the East end of the Banadad Trail. This is a 27km groomed track through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wildterness, running parallel to the Gunflint Trail. To say it's "dog-friendly" would be generous: dogs are allowed, though […] [Original post on mountains.social]

First full day at the cabin! We ventured out onto Poplar Lake for a bit of Hok (backcountry) "skijoring" to check out conditions on the ice. It was slow going, especially for huskies who were breaking trail. There's at least a foot of snow on top of the […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Surprise! Vacation! We weren't sure if we were going to have a February skijoring vacation again this year, but stars have aligned and we're on our way north. Our favorite cabin was available this week, 18" of snow has fallen in the area (with a few more […] [Original post on mountains.social]

RE: https://mountains.social/@Paws2Trail/116114990692314812 For the Monday Morning crowd: dogs and people having fun! And if you need more distractions from starting your work day, there's a longer video in the replies. 😁

Yay Snow! ❄️ 🐾 ⛷️ After rain and melt back to mostly bare ground, we got over half a foot of fresh snow on the west side of the Metro! Baker Park Reserve groomed their multi-use trail, so we headed out yesterday to see what it was like under more ideal […] [Original post on mountains.social]

We've fallen behind on posting! Last weekend, following a period of warmth and melting of the remaining snow, we headed south to Frontenac State Park's Rattlesnake Bluff for a hike. Many smells were revealed to our huskies' noses in the grasses along the […] [Original post on mountains.social]

We've fallen behind on posting! Last weekend, following a period of warmth and melting of the remaining snow, we headed south to Frontenac State Park's Rattlesnake Bluff for a hike. Many smells were revealed to our huskies' noses in the grasses along the […] [Original post on mountains.social]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@anne_lienchen/116040091160437147 Deep snow helps soften the blow when learning to skijor takes a bad turn!

One last day for skijoring before a long period of melting is expected! We drove to the other side of the Twin Cities metro to Baker Park Reserve, which we'd never been to before. It has what's advertised as a 5 mile loop (The yellow rubber band along […] [Original post on mountains.social]

With warm temps cycling in and out, we ventured out onto Jensen Lake this morning after temps dipped below freezing overnight. Just enough snow on top of the ice for our skis to get traction and glide! We hadn't been out on a frozen lake since last winter […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Impromptu Husky Playdate! Passing our neighborhood tennis courts we noticed Scout, a black and white husky, having some off-leash time inside. Tonttu and Zeena wanted to say hi! Scout's human readily agreed, so everyone got to run around off leash for a bit […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Back on the snow today! We second-guessed our plans to go further west and instead stuck to the more local Murphy Hanrehan horse/pet trails. It was heavily trampled, but good enough to ski. Here, Tonttu and Jeff go off-trail for a stright, if lumpy, descent against a clear sky. #huskies #skijoring

Finally Fresh Snow! Not much more than an inch, but it was enough to get us skiing once again on top of the icy base. We chose nearby and flat Pike Island once again to test the conditions, and were happy to find that it was surprisingly good! The snow was […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Queen of the Mountain once again! Yes, it's just a pile of dirty snow at the end of the parking lot by the local hockey rink, but it's the TALLEST pile of snow in the neighborhood, and Zeena is at the pinnacle!

A quick and quiet escape from the chaos of the city. We were curious how the frozen falls looked at Nerstrand State Park after a long period of sub-zero (F) weather, and the only disappointment was that all the flowing water was covered up! Only deep […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Car battery was dead from the cold, so we had to alter our hiking plans yesterday to just a walk around the local lake. Not the change of scenery we'd been looking forward to, but at least the huskies got some enrichment!

It's snowing, but it's also blowing, and the ground is ice, so there's nothing for the new snow to stick to! Thankfully, anti-ice preparations kept us safe on today's walk.

Over the weekend we remembered a trail along the Minnesota River that we hadn't visited in quite a while. It's messy in summer and icy in winter where poor drainage means water over the trail, but right now EVERYTHING is icy, so it's as good a time to visit […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Ugh. The light coating of ice we were supposed to get last night turned into an inch of wet rain. All our snow is now slush. 😭 Forecast for the foreseeable future has us bouncing above and below the freezing point, with no significant precipitation in sight. Skijoring is done for the time being. 😩

Woohoo! Finally some fast skijoring on X-C skis! Back at the UMore Lone Rock Trail, this time the 4.3 mi middle loop. Still not groomed, but a few prior skiers set tracks and there was just enough snow to float over even the thinnest wind-blown spots […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Zorro's foster family picked him up yesterday, so we're back to a family of four. With fresh snow on the ground, we headed out to check out skijoring conditions at UMore's east end of the Lone Rock Trail. The trail hasn't been groomed, so the wide Hok skis […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Zeena is not a counter surfer. But if a house guest happens to pull half a lasagna off the counter onto the floor, she is not above helping to cover up the crime! #huskies #dogsofmastodon

RE: https://mountains.social/@Paws2Trail/115811052486975232 Zorro may look like he's not wearing a harness, but that's just because our only spare X-back in his size is totally black!

Back on the skis! Snow's back! Just enough for decent skiing. Dale took the more experienced huskies on his faster XC skis while Jeff wrangled Zorro on his bush-whacking Hok skis. Here's part of the return leg where Zeena and Tonttu realized that they were […] [Original post on mountains.social]

RE: https://mountains.social/@Paws2Trail/115799690521888420 We should not that Zorro is available for adoption! We're just dog-sitting for his current foster family. If you need a bundle of energy and are in the MN/WI area, check him out at […]

Introduced Zorro to our neighborhood in a blizzard! Good, hearty Minnesotan children (and their parents) were taking advantage of the weather at the local sledding hill, despite the windchill. The huskies were of course oblivious to the cold and the wind […] [Original post on mountains.social]

Zorro is a much better indicator of how much it's snowing than either Zeena or Tonttu! Given the state of the yard, today's snow is coming none too soon! Bring it on!

Early morning husky chaos! Around 7:30 we took delivery of a temporary new husky to the pack. His current name is Zorro, a foster dog who's vacationing with us while his human foster family visits with their family out of state. They'll be picking him up […] [Original post on mountains.social]