Won't you be using tennis shoes instead of snow shoes? I hear it didn't snow this year.
In 1976 I was in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I found out about the muzzleloading biathlon. It billed itself as "The World's Only Muzzleloading Biathlon."
I wanted to enter, but didn't have a gun. There was a guy in town who did scrimshaw. This guy only dressed in buckskins. You would see him in the bar at night with his buckskins on having a beer. Well, he offered to let me borrow his flintlock. I didn't have a chance to test fire it.
I rented some cross country skis and I was in!
There was a one kilometer course through the woods. At the start/finish were the targets. There was a 2 foot square of cardboard with your number on it. Nine sugar cookies were fastened to it. You skied the course one time, and then you took three shots. If, after three laps, you had shot all your cookies, you did not have to ski the fourth lap.
I skied the course the first lap, and I got up to the shooting line, and saw that three of my cookies had been shot! I asked the range master what the deal was, he said, "Somebody doesn't read numbers too well. Tough luck for them, it is your target."
Good thing for me. I pulled the trigger and thought the rifle had blown up. My first ever shot with a flintlock, too much powder in the pan. I missed all three shots.
It took me four or five shots to figure out the lock, and one or two more shots to see where I was hitting. I would up getting 4 cookies with my last 5 shots.
It was also my first time to try cross country skis, hell, I was from Georgia. Let's just say I was not ready for the Olympics. With the help of my competitor shooting 3 of my cookies, I think I finished 17th out of 25 guys.
That was a lot of fun.
