My local trails have been slowly working themselves into shape, and in the last week or so have become packed enough to doing longer rides from my house on the snow bike. My “default loop” these days is about 30 miles, mostly on trails, with a short section on a dirt road. On fast days last spring it would take me under 4 hours to complete the loop. Since the trails seem to becoming passible, I decided to head out and check things out. Alas, this time it took almost twice that, with a fair bit of pushing.
Sections of the trails are really nice, mostly in places were the local mushers are grooming the trails to a white asphalt like hardness.
In other places there has been little traffic, probably because we only have 6″ or so of snow on the ground, making travel a bit hard on snow-machines. The ruts made by ATVs in the summer are barely covered in some places..
It was a nice ride though, and it was wonderful to be out on the snow bike right out of the house. Darkness is arriving pretty early these days, which is not a bad things – you can’t have winters in Alaska without darkness, and I was happy to spend some time riding in the dark. It might seem strange to some, but I love traveling after sunset in winter…
I was somewhat surprised I had the trails completely to my self, and only encountered one other person, a fat biker, just a few miles before I was back at my house.
Things are definitely looking up, but we need a bit more snow before our winter trail system really opens up. With another 5″ of snow the trails would be fantastic – here’s to more snow!
Tags: Randomness, snow biking, stub