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#huskies

10 posts6 participants1 post today
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Paws to Trail

Happy 10th birthday to our little girl Zeena! 🥳 🎉

Sadly, it is both raining AND the air quality index is in the Very Unhealthy for Everyone range, so we won't be able to get outside to enjoy the day. 😠

Sorry, bored little girl! We'll go back to having adventures again once Canada stop sending its vaporized forests our way.

A very young Siberian husky named Zeena, walking to the right across the scene with a happy expression. She's nearly all white, with some faint gray markings on her face in a typical husky fashion. Purple coneflowers frame the image on the right.
A little husky gremlin peers out mischievously from under an upholstered chair on short legs. She alone can fit in this tiny hideout, to snap out at unwary visitors crawling by! Currently, she's on her back, paws gripping the edge of the chair above, head almost fully exposed, peering at the camera upside down.
An attempt at a family photo with humans Jeff and Dale holding huskies Tonttu, Zeena and Gypsy in a snowy scene. Tonttu is leaping, face squinting against the lead that he's fighting, held by Jeff with grim determination. Dale holds flexi leads for Zeena, who is standing calmly and gazing off to the left, and Gypsy, far right, a very elderly husky, just happy to be along on another adventure.
Zeena rests comfortably in the house we rented for our recent week of hiking in the Porcupine mountains. She's content, head up and alert but relaxed, muzzle open and tongue slightly out in a happy grin. She's facing left, so you can see her icy blue left eye. Her coat is a base of white with large regions of gray feathering to black where her long guard hairs are the densest.
#Huskies#DogsOfMastodon
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Paws to Trail

Many photos were taken!

Breezes off the lake were refreshing and kept the bugs away. Down at the water level, the air was surprisingly clear and clean, but the sky above was hazy with smoke from Canadian wildfires to the north. (You could smell a hint of the smoke once you climbed back up to the forest uplands.)

Still sitting on the rock where snacks were eaten, Jeff leans back towards Zeena, who is now standing on the rock beside him, to take a selfie with the two of them together, though Zeena is distracted by something to the left. Tonttu stands in front, looking back at the camera with a somewhat mischievous look on his face. Lake superior ripples in the background, along with a shoreline that recedes towards the horizon, and the sky is a uniform grey-blue of haze.
Dale and Tonttu pose for a selfie on the shoreline. The camera points back towards the birch and aspen trees glowing yellow green with backlit sun behind them. Dale is smiling at the camera, while Tonttu has his eyes squinted closed, with a small bit of tongue hanging out of his open-smile muzzle.
Dale and Tonttu pose for another selfie, this time with wide Lake Superior to their back, Tonttu is poking his muzzle up and into Dale's face, while he leands back and squints against both the sunlight and Tonttu's invasion of his personal space.
Back to Zeena and Jeff on their wide flat rock on the shoreline. Zeena is standing back a bit, head alert, and posing nicely as she looks towards the forest shoreline to the left. Jeff has his arm straight out towards her, holding his phone as he grabs a photo.
#Huskies#Hiking#DogsOfMastodon
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Paws to Trail

About a mile down the trail there is a wide, rocky stream with a cleverly cantilevered footbridge passing over it. We rarely take the bridge, however! The stream is a great place for the huskies to cool off and hydrate. Lots of rocks to hop between.

Husky Zeena stands on a flat shale-like rock in a wide, shallow stream at the bottom of a small, rocky valley. She appears left, downstream, towards a foot bridge that is held up by a very wide, nearly flat A-frame structure.
Human hiker Jeff stands on the bridge in the previous photo. You're looking down the length of the bridge, and he stands in the middle, with the supports poking up on either side, just over knee height. Jeff is carrying a camera over his shoulder, his phone mounted on top of his walking stick, and has a bug net over his hat and head.
A very wet Tonttu walks downstream in the same stream as the previous photos, padding along flat, slightly angled rocks around which the water flows.
An interesting plant with wide leaves radiating from the base like a trout lily, and a single stalk, at the top of which it splits into 4 equal directions, with yellow-green flowers at the end of each short stalk. The petals form a bell like shape, with long stamens reaching out beyond the petal tips.
#Hiking#Huskies
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Paws to Trail

Saturday was our last day of #hiking with the #huskies in the #PorcupineMountainWilderness. After some thunderstorms blew through in the morning we headed out to the Pinkerton Trail, which is a relatively short (<3mi) trek down comparatively well maintained trails to Lake Superior. Narrow boardwalks keep you elevated over most muddy spots, and a dense canopy of hemlock, red maple and yellow birch keep things shady.

Lots of bird activity high up in the canopy, to far for photos, especially with impatient huskies!

Normally we hike with one dog per person, but today neither Zeena nor Tonttu were content to be wheel dogs, so we put them both in lead position. Fortunately, Tonttu's lead is shorter than Zeena's, so they could handle the single-track boardwalks politely, without pushing each other off.

Huskies Zeena and Tonttu pause on a narrow boardwalk trail that winds through hemlock woods. The boardwalk is two boards wide, resting just above the ground on bulky timbers. They're both looking to the right, peering into the dark recess of an undercut bank to the right. The top of the bank is covered in small bright green ferns, and has a large moss-covered tree trunk leaning off screen to the right in the background.
Zeena continues to lead Tonttu down the narrow wooden boardwalk, now in deciduous forest. The bright sun above cuts down through a thinning in the canopy, creating a lacy wedge of illuminated leaves pointing down towards the trail, with shadier leaves on either side.
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Paws to Trail

We're on the road again today, heading back home after a week of hiking on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Currently packing up the rental place and will be heading out shortly, so no time to post updates about yesterday!

We got one last hike in yesterday, the Pinkerton Trail down to Lake Superior and back, with a lot of photos to sort through and post once we return home.

Jeff sits on a large emerging bit of shale bedrock poking out of an otherwise rocky shore of Lake Superior. He and Zeena are both looking at his phone, either commenting on photos Jeff has taken or taking a selfie. One can't tell. Tonttu stands in the foreground, looking a bit bored. Lake Superior is calm, with a few white caps on waves just before hitting shore. The sky is a bit hazy from Ontario wildfire smoke blowing across the lake.
#Hiking#Huskies
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Paws to Trail

A delightful stream tumbled down the valley we followed up to Summit Peak, giving the pups one final chance to hydrate and cool off before the last leg.

And one last chipmunk to disappear in a hole in a tree that both huskies huffed and snuffled in, but failed to convince the critter to come out and play.

Sadly, there was no trail back to our start from the Summit Peak trailhead, so we had 2 miles downhill to endure. The hard repetitive impact of hiking boots on pavement was much more painful than the previous 5 miles of rocky trail. We were quite glad when we finally made it back to the car!

Tonttu stands in a small pool in a rocky stream in a valley, shaking off water he'd just been lying in. A hand on the upper left corner of the image holds his leash, which cuts an orange swash across the image.
Tonttu and Zeena both try to push their muzzles into a small hole at the base of a tree, after a chipmunk that had just disappeared into it. The tree has a large knot or growth above them, about human head height. Jeff, who has been walking them both, watches. He's carrying a walking staff with his phone mounted on top, is wearing a field vest with pockets bulging with gear, a camera strap slung across his shoulder, and his head is covered in a bug net over his wide-brimmed hat.
#Huskies#Hiking
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Paws to Trail

The shore of Lily Pond just below the cabin was nice and breezy, keeping the blackflies at bay long enough to get a snack. The deciduous woodlands were heavy enough with blackflies that we finally broke out the head nets.

After that we turned north, then east across the Little Carp river and surrounding wetland on a boardwalk before climbing up to Summit Peak.

Two huskies lead the photographer down a set of stairs to a wood bridge over the end of Lily Pond towards mixed woods beyond. The wide pond expands to the right, and boggy water on the left.
Looking back towards the stairs from the other side of the bridge in the previous photo, you can see Jeff descending to follow the rest of the pack. The Lily Pond cabin is hidden behind dense trees on the hillside on the right, and a lone pine tree rises on the edge of the pond on the left.
Jeff leads huskies Zeena and Tonttu down a narrow wooden boardwalk through soggy grass wetland with alder brush rising tall on either side, nearly closing over the path. The boardwalk is so narrow the huskies have to go single file.
Jeff walks both huskies down a trail through maple forest, with bright green canopy above filtering light to a greenish hue down below. A single young tree bends in a sweeping arc over the trail from right to left, over the hikers.
#Hiking#Huskies
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Paws to Trail

Back on the trail today in the Porcupine Mountains! We explored a new bit of trail to Lily Pond cabin. In the past, we've come down to it from the north while rounding Summit Peak, but this time we cut across, then up from the south.

It was a nice bit of trail! Low muddy areas had largely dried out, and there were plenty of stream crossings to keep the pups cool.

Here and there along the trail were tiny white clusters of flowers that were new to us. Turns out they're dwarf ginseng! We didn't harvest any, since we didn't know what they were -- and if we had, it would have been illegal!

Husky Tonttu leads the photographer down a barely-visible trail through hardwood forest, with bright sun spotting the forest floor where it breaks through the canopy. Hiker Jeff and husky Zeena lead the way a ways ahead on the trail.
Tonttu's face peaks out from behind a cluster of yellow bellwort flowers, seen down a flower level.
Several dwarf ginseng plant rise from sun-dappled forest floor, covered in dried maple leaves, through which a number of different green-leaved plants are poking through.
A lake squeezed on both sides by low boggy borders rests calmly below a blue sky with one shaggy cloud off above the horizon. Low hills with a mix of deciduous and evergreen trees rise above the far shore, and one evergreen tree frames the image on the left, rising from the shoreline there.
#Hiking#Huskies
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Paws to Trail

Happy Husky-eye view of part of the hike back from Union Spring two days ago.

There was some mud here, easily avoided if you wanted to (clearly the huskies DIDN'T) but not nearly as bad as on yesterday's hike.

The zeezeezee-zoo-ZEE song is the Black-throated Green warbler.

The teacher-teacher-teacher-teacher song is an Ovenbird.

#Huskies#Hiking#Mud
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Paws to Trail

Following the escarpment (on the Escarpment Trail, nonetheless!) you quickly get out of sight of the popular overlook. The trail follows the edge in some places, and dips back into the woods in others, but you keep popping out at some new vista of the wide valley.

(Best not to think too much about the fact that you're eventually going to be climbing that other side of the valley eventually!)

🧵 2/x

A wide vista, looking back towards Lake of the Clouds nestled between low hills (ancient mountains) with foreground trees framing the picture.
Closeup of husky Tonttu pausing while hiker Jeff takes a photo with his phone mounted to the top of his hiking staff. They're standing on a rocky swath, with bright yellow-green shrubs and a blue sky beyond.
Jeff and Tonttu are small figures on a high slope coming down form left to right, covered in bright yellow-green leaves of stunted trees on the exposed face of mountaintop. The slope meets a steep cliff of dark stone that drops away into the valley below in dramatic fractured vertical shapes. A few isolated evergreens stick up through the low deciduous trees on the slope, and full-sized mature forest stands in the valley below. Lake of the Clouds can still be seen as a distant splash of blue far back in the valley.
Jeff and Tonttu stand on yet another rocky face overlooking the wide spread of hill across the valley under a blue sky with scattered fluffy clouds on the horizon. Jeff is holding his camera with a long lens, and Tonttu stands with a happy tongue-out grin, looking at something in the trees behind them, to the left.
#Hiking#Huskies
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Paws to Trail

As promised! Photos from our long hike yesterday.

It has been years since we did the 12 mile loop at the Porcupine Mountains from Lake of the Clouds overlook SW down to the Big Carp River, Up to Mirror Lake across the wide valley, then back down and up again to the overlook. It's a long trek for any of us, but trail conditions and/or elder dog limitations kept us away.

Based on our test hike the day before, where we found less mud than we've seen in a long time, and with Zeena and Tonttu in good form, we decided to take the plunge!

🧵 1/x

gaiagps.com/map/?loc=12.2/-89.

Husky Zeena looks down into a wide valley from a high overlook fenced in with a wall make of pointy rocks. She's facing SW along a high ridge that falls quickly off just to her left to a wide valley with a dark line of trees making a hidden river, then up a low slope to a distant line of hills. It's a sunny day with clear blue skies.
Husky Zeena has now turned left towards the NE, traversing the decorative layer of rocks on the top of the wall probably intended to keep humans from sitting/climbing on them. The wall recedes to the left, creating a barrier at the edge of a flatish rock escarpment on which people are enjoying the view. In the distance, to the east, a long narrow lake fills the valley between the escarpment and the ancient mountains on the other side, on the right. Zeena's fluffy sickle-shaped tail is held high, exaggeratedly large by the wide angle lens, shining in the sun, just out of frame above, which creates a curved lens flare that ends at Zeena's tail.
Sightseeing done, Zeena turns back to the right, going SW along the escarpment wall. The rocky escarpment descends to an accessible paved area with walkways and ramps to a wooden platform perched out over a distant cliff.
Screenshot from the Gaia hiking platform showing a triangular route and its elevation profile. From the topo lines, you can see the track follow a ridgeline that parallels the Lake Superior shoreline to the NW, which also passes SW/NE. At the Big Carp river the trail turns in a mostly straight line east to Mirror lake, then returns to the start with a bending line. The 12.2 mile track included 1,388 feet of ascent, and took 7.5 hours to complete.
#Hiking#Huskies#PorcupineMountainWilderness
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Paws to Trail

Union River had many opportunities for the pups to splash and cool off. Very convenient for washing the mud off their feet after a particularly muddy section!

Despite all the water, insects were surprisingly tolerable! There were annoying gnats/midges in the uplands, especially where the air was still, but as long as you kept moving, they weren't a bother.

We did our birding mostly by ear: the warblers and vireos were all up high in the canopy where the warm sunlight was shining.

Husky Tonttu pauses in a shady, rocky shallow stream that roils over the dark rocks, with a similarly dark rocky wall of rock rising behind him. Occasional spots of sunlight break up the shadowy ground.
Husky Zeena sniffs at a rounded river rock on the edge of a stream below deciduous trees that glow yellow-green above and behind. The green and yellow reflect on the swirling surface in the foreground.
Zeena pauses on the rocky edge of a stream that riffles by gently. Bright trees shine in the background, and some downed trunks lay across the rocks behind her.
Husky Zeena pauses, her front paws on an old rotting log, to investigate a cluster of marsh marigold plants: five-petaled flowers above a clump of round heart-shaped leaves. Most of the scene is in dappled shade, but the sun breaks through to highlight the flowers.
#Hiking#Huskies
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