The Balto is named after a famous Siberian Husky sled dog from Alaska and it was fitting that I got to try my Balto in rain and snow this weekend. I had occasion to take some pictures during a running race called the Sheetz to Sheetz race in King George Virginia this last weekend. I was supposed to use my drone to take some drone photography as I do as a volunteer for organizations and my other website timdrones.com and Instagram fxbg.droning, however the weather didn’t cooperate for that. But I was able to test out the Balto in poor conditions. I had done some pre-race work for them over the last couple weeks though which can be seen at their Instagram page Sheetz2Sheetz, if you’re interested.

The snowy weather didn’t allow me to fly a drone, but it did allow me to check out the Balto in poor weather on a trail.

All these things were done with the help of my Balto. The scooter has been great for me to get farther off road than I have been able without it recently. I used the scooter to travel parts of the Dahlgren Heritage Rail Trail for preparations and scouting good areas to use my drone before the race and also for getting some nice following shots with my cell phone gimbal during the race.

On the trail I had to navigate large puddles, some small mud and slippery snowy grass. It was slow going, but I made it by standing occasionally near the front wheel, and also while going down-hill I kept my feet off the scooter and used them for stability. At one point I did have to walk it up a portion of the snowy hill that it’s sitting on in the picture above. That’s to be expected really because the scooter has road tires and is front wheel drive. I knocked the snow and ice off of it and put it in my Prius to bring between parts of the race that I had to travel to get pictures. It wasn’t ideal for a scooter ride on that day, but it was useful and the scooter handled it like a champ.

This is the hill the scooter is sitting on and the runners had to navigate.

As is usually the case during a ride in winter, I had on my heated vest under my winter coat and I had on boots to keep me dry as well. I’ve also been trying out electric hand warmers on the last few outings, so I’ll bring news of them in a future posting.