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Nov. 26, 2024, 2:36 p.m. -  Jotegir

I think a solid batch of my favourite rides of all time are in the snow. We've had a bunch of shuttle days where somehow the shuttle road is super sketchy and snowy but the trails are great. Here's three off the top of my head: 1\. Closing day at Sun Peaks. Sun Peaks always closes the last Sunday in September (or now Monday if its TRC day). The weather is either 25 degrees and sunny or snowing. A couple years ago happened to be a snowing day. The year after this one it snowed a ton but it had lots of rain and hail mixed in. The grip was terrible, I remember riding a steep section at the top of a single black trail, turning my bike to make a corner and just two wheel sliding straight as if I hadn't initiated a turn at all. Fun and great for a laugh, but not the most memorable. The best was when it was solid conditions and there was a bunch of huge fluffy snowflakes burying those excellent conditions. It was strange - the roots didn't even ride like they were wet. The park wasn't busy at all and the snow was really coming down. Getting "fresh tracks" on everything, flying past huge snowflakes, and seeing a single tire mark of my friend in front of me as the only thing marring an otherwise perfectly white jump takeoff was magic.   2\. Shuttling bikes in the snow mid-December up a popular forestry service road. The trails were great as always (these trails are on just the right grade and have just the right type of dirt that they ride well no matter the conditions, provided it isn't a year the snow is simply too deep), but the memorable part was passing all the people out to harvest Christmas trees. Riding our bikes past a dad and two kids messing around on those GT Snowracer things was something fun too! 3\. Riding two foot deep powder down a ski resort. A group of friends hiked our bikes up a ski hill for a couple hours at night, to ride down. We had two fat bikes, but most people were on regular enduro or DH bikes. The conditions were such that it was about two weeks of hard pack ice and then a huge powder dump that day. When we decided to turn around, we initially started down a steeper green run and it simply didn't work. It wasn't until we tried some blue-black runs that things really came together. We were riding on the hardpack below the fresh snow, the traction was pretty solid but the powder made it something else. Instead of being stopped by skiied out bumps that formed after the track was skiied out that day, the bike tires sliced straight through it and would spray snow above your head. Funniest part is that we got caught like 20 minutes into the two hour hike up. I think because we were all on bikes they didn't know what to do. The conversation went something like "oh weird. You're on bikes. What are you doing?" "oh, we're pushing our bikes up, and then we're going to ride down" "..... huh. Ok, stay off the stuff we just groomed and try not to get hit by a grooming machine later. bye." I'll admit that during none of these did I think "I am very cold and am going to be in trouble if I got supremely injured out here", which has happened and is always something to keep in mind as a possibility if this is something you do.

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