Well, we’ve had a couple of nice weekends only to end in a snowy blizzard, so when this weekend rolled around again boasting of plus temperatures, I didn’t get too excited… And yet, yesterday was just about 10° I think, and then today hit 12° with sun! It was a thing of beauty… 
And, so, I decided that I’d jump on the bike and head out onto my trails to see what condition they were.
Well, they kind of sucked…
Seriously, I don’t know what miracles I was hoping for, but we’ve had a ton of snow and only a few days like this weekend, so of course the trails are still going to be covered in snow. But I didn’t think they’d be this tough to ride! It was so much fun, though, just to get out again and ride! So the fact that it took me nearly 30 minutes just to get to Rose Hill? I didn’t let that bother me too much…
Still enough snow to stand the bike up in means there’s still too much snow I think. 
As you can see in the picture above, the trails are pretty deep still. I’d say about 2 inches of just-about-frozen crust over about 3-4 inches of hard packed snow-turned-ice. Lots of melting still to do. It was fun, but a body can only handle 6 km/h of slow, bumpy, side-to-side-slipping-and-sliding type of riding. If I had to ride this all the way to work, I’d probably not enjoy it as much as I did today. Twice, I turned to start climbing up a hill (I took the pipeline trail section heading west through the Juniper trails), and the bike was suddenly laying on it’s side on the ice… It was crazy how fast and how unpredictable the bumpy ice is, especially on two wheels. It doesn’t help that I left my Specialized Crossroads tire on the back because I was too lazy to swap it out (I have it on for use on the trainer).
Lots of water, too, which was cool (literally), but made me nervous as the ice underneath now was unpredictable AND hidden… 
In fact, one section of the trail looked kind of cool as the water had been melting and flowing down the trail making a bunch of “ice shelves” on its way down (see the picture below).
This was a tricky hill to make, both up AND down.
Another thing? Seems that since the biking stopped, so did the cleaning up of fallen trees. I counted 5 trees laying across the trail (I was able to move one of them, but the rest will require a chain saw and a few guys to remove).
There’s a guy on Kijiji selling two new Nokian Mount and Ground studded bike tires for $50. Considering that they’re about $70 each, this is a great deal and I plan on going by tonight or tomorrow to pick them up. They should help in the ice as seen in the picture above. Not sure about the extra weight and rolling resistance, but if it means I can get on my trails sooner, I’m all for it! Then again, a week or so of weather like today and I’ll be riding on mostly dirt and mud anyways… Something I saw nothing of today!
It’s been a long winter (by Kamloops standards), and I’m raring to get on the trails again very soon!!!
