The family and I have a trip planned this weekend in the White Mountains NRA. It was looking a bit dubious as there is not a lot of snow left on some of the trails around town so I left work a hour early and drove out to the trail head to checkout the trails on my bike. Fortunately there was nothing to worry about- at least the first 7 miles or so of trail out of the mile 28 trail head are in great shape. There is a bit of dirt showing on the first couple of hundred yards out of the trail head – which was very ominous.
After a brief encounter with a musher who was having trouble slowing down his sled on the icy hill I zipped up the hill and soon the dirt was gone.
The encounter with the musher was pretty funny – I saw him coming crashing down the trail and grabbed Remus and jumped off the trail as he was obviously not going to be able to slow down. He zipped by me with a quick “opps sorry – can’t slow down” and continued down the trail and zoomed out of sight as he headed into the parking lot. Shortly after that there was a big bang and a lot of cursing..
The rest of the bike ride was fantastic – the trail was hard and fast, the sun was shinning, and it was beautiful clear day. I went down the trail to Lees and briefly stuck my head in the cabin but as it was colder inside than out didn’t hang around all that long.
After leaving Lees I zipped back up to the trail junction and down to the big hill a ways towards Eleazar’s, then turned around about a third of the way down as it was getting late and I didn’t want to bike back in the dark.
Remus enjoyed the bike ride, but probably would have preferred to be skiing. The trail was super fast and I spent quite a bit of time in the big ring cranking – this gave Remus a bit less time to explore as he had to run pretty hard to keep up.
I am really enjoying my Fisher Paragon. I have always been a bit dubious of the Fisher bikes – it alway seemed to me that the bikes (and Gary Fisher) had a bit too much “attitude” and not enough bike, but I am really enjoying the Paragon. Its really fun to ride and quite responsive.
I had been avoiding the Whites recently as I had spent a ton of time out there this winter training for the white mountain 100 race. It is a great place to train since the Whites has a long trail system that is in good shape and has enough variety to keep me from getting bored. Alas, I eventually got sick of it.. It was nice to be back there though – its really a nice place to escape to. I am looking forward to this weekends ski trip with the family – it should be a fun trip!
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| End of the Snow Season Scouting Mission |
Tags: biking, mellow, white mountains