Snow biking

Today was a great day for a ride. The first somewhat serious snow of the year, where the snow actually sticks to the ground. Riding a trainer indoors lets you pedal when it's cold and dark, but it's never the same as getting a good ride outside, in fresh air. This is the time of the year when riding after work basically means riding in the pitch black so I'm not big on it.

It was a bout 30°F, I set out on the trails I grew up riding on the high tension powerlines down the road. Those trails have gotten really bad over the years. Many sections are impassable because they are submerged in too much water and mud to pedal through and are lined with thick bushes. I did find some promising new trails though. The snowmobile/atv trail network crosses those powerlines and so I hopped onto them. Never having explored those trails I wasn't really sure what I was in for but they ended up being really nice riding.

I'm not sure exactly how far I went, but I am guessing about 12 miles. On the mechanical end of things, these linear pull brakes have got to go. They got so caked full of crap that I had to stop and unpack the snow and leaves from them quite often or the drag would be unreal. I have a set of Hayes 9 Carbon discs in a box waiting to be installed. I'm waiting for some IS to post mount adaptors to come in to mount them up.
A number of places provided for some interesting riding, in this place the trail had been long since washed out and there was a long technical descent down what had evolved into a streambed. I saw a huge flock of turkeys at on point, they didn't quite know what to make of me. Eventually I came out onto another smaller powerline and I thought I was heading in a different direction than I actually was. I thought I was on a trail I had never been on before, but it turns out that I was actually on a trail that I had been on several times, the snow just made it look different. Granted, it was also about 15 years ago the last time I was there. It was a great ride today, made me feel pretty good. Hopefully the ground will freeze up a bit more without lots of snow falling here quite yet so I can get out on the trails here a few more times before winter really settles in.