I’m Back!!! I’m not back… :(

With the amount of overtime we’ve had to put in at work lately, I’ve been working every Saturday as well. As such, it was a warm 0° this morning so I figured I’d ride to work this morning. After all, it was Saturday. If I was late for work, big deal! And, being Saturday, I knew I would be leaving in decent time while it was still light out and warm.
Well, the ride in was tough, but rideable. For the most part, it was fun. I had the new studded tires on and they gripped the ice amazingly! I was quite impressed. The higher I got, though, the deeper the snow on the trails and the less packed they were. So, I figured I would stay lower and take the Billy Minor trail North through Peterson’s Creek. This turned out to be a rather poor choice, as I headed down the side, the trail quickly turned quite icey. With the steep nature of this trail, even the studs had a hard time grabbing the ice and I started having a tough time controlling my speed. As such, I tried walking some of the icier portions, which took forever, and I ended up slipping a falling a few times. I was wearing my biking shoes, which have little in the way of traction on shear ice, and it was pretty nerve wracking for a while. finally, after a full hour since I’d left the house, I made it up and out of the other side of the creek and headed the rest of the way to work without issue.
Coming home was another storey. At +7°, the ice was breaking up and the mud was deep. It was extremely difficult to ride. In fact, there were times I was pushing hard just to go downhill!!! I will let the pictures speak for themselves…

There were more trees across the trail then I could count. I may have to buy a chainsaw this year, as it doesn’t look like hikers actually seem to care!

This is what the trail was commonly like this afternoon. Snow to ice to soft-break-through-ice to mud… Calling this “tough” is like calling the ocean a lake… Sure made me work on my balance and riding lightly, not to mention letting the bike jump where ever it wanted to...

And then suddenly ice! But, these tires work wonders on this stuff, pretty cool really!

So… If the mud is deep enough to stand the bike up on its own, is it too deep???

 This downhill section was one of the toughest. Obviously, not only is this hard on me, but very hard on the trails too. Granted, I'm not adding much more than all the 3" deep footprints all over, but if I did this twice a day for a week, I'd tear up these trails and make for some poor dry conditions if that ever comes!

Throw in the odd lake, too, just to make it interesting…

So as the pictures show, the trails are just not passable yet. In fact, the mud was so deep that the trails are not even passable by walking yet! It was quite brutal, really. I will try again next Saturday, hopefully!