Early fall training. We decided to take the dogs past their usual turn around in the meadow and do a long climb to the summit of Babitt Peak. At the top we found the gate to the look out parking lot was locked so we had to hand turn a long string of dogs on a narrow trail but the dogs are used to this as we often encounter downed trees or other obstacles while training.  In the distance you can see Stampede lake at 5700 ft elevation where we started the run.

One of our last runs of the season--or so we thought. We actually got a lot more snow at the end of May. Snow depth was excellent up high at 8000 ft, but a lot of bare patches at the trail head around 6000 ft.

Usually these trails are groomed by snowcats, but during storms like this one the groomers hadn't been out. There wasn't much snowmobile traffic either.