Posted by: WeTYC...
Posted by: Vikb
Excited for some snow riding I set of for a dawn patrol to some local trails. Lights charged. All bundled up! I made it a block before I had to help the first stuck car and that was on a main road. When I got onto a side street I had trouble riding and the bikepath was 100% pushing. After a couple KMs of pushing I gave up as it's 9kms+ each way to the closest trails. Usually that's a chill bikepath spin. Not today.
It's amazing how small the window of conditions is for really good snow riding. I had an unbelievable snow ride today. When I started out, I was blasting through 13cm of snow and I found myself mesmerized by this bow wave form in front of my front tire. I powered up double-track grades I thought I had no business maintaining traction on. I even managed to re-start from a spin-out on a hill several times. For the first half of the ride, I probably only hike-a-biked 10% of the time. I've never been that successful in that deep of snow (I'm only on 2.75 tires, not full fatties). Every once and a while, I'd hit a little zone where the ground had maybe been warmer, or there was a pocket of slightly warmer air or something, and it would all fall apart. The front end would start porpoising followed by the rear end breaking traction. I'd get off and push through that section then sometimes with no change in grade still be able to get back on and get moving again.
While I was riding the snow continued to fall--another 5cm or so. I think it also warmed up a degee or two. That little bit change tipped the balance from best snow ride ever to death march. On my way out, I was struggling to keep moving and upright going down some of those hills I'd just motored up two hours earlier.
Can't post my pic here because I was on my coil-sprung 6" behemoth (least-efficient snow bike ever!)
Yes. I have had a lot of amazing snow rides here on the South Island the last 10 years. In fact I'm probably batting 80% for great to bad, but it doesn't take much to go from amazing to terrible. When it clicks it's fantastic. I'm glad you got out and had a fun ride.
I got out again yesterday with a friend and had a much better ride. Not so much because conditions were any better, but I think 1) knowing what was likely to happen kept my expectations low, 2) I knew where I could ride and couldn't ride so I stuck to higher success areas and 3) the more riding I did in the slippery conditions the better I got at it. In fact I was highly entertained by the number of times I managed to save what looked like a wipe out that in the first ride would have had me on the ground. And of course having a buddy to share the ride with was also great.
The temps are a lot warmer this morning and the snow has consolidated a bunch. A couple more cups of tea and I'll go and see if I can ride the bikepaths to the trails. If not I'll try Monday and Tuesday. I figure I should get some white shredding in somewhere along the continuum from too much white stuff to a flooded brown mess! ;-)
