I have been slacking a bit, both on writing and having adventures worth writing about. I am theoretically signed up for the Iditarod Trail Invitational, but given the covid crisis it isn’t clear to me it isn’t going to be an out and back again… not super exciting. Otherwise, I don’t really have much planned this winter, and that is making getting into shape and staying motivated hard… Fortunately winter is fun and the dogs and I found myself heading out to Cache Mountain Cabin in the Whites Mountains NRA with a winter weather advisory and a forecast of 2 to 5 inches of snow. I packed enough food to push my bike out (and back!) to the cabin, but fortunately the trail was mostly in great shape. Eddy and Shiloh had a blast, though Eddy had to be on harness for about half the ride in and all of the ride out due to all the caribou and his driving need to chase them.
Eddy, with his head in the snow as always..
I had left my good lens at home as I didn’t expect to see anything worth taking photos – go figure, as it turned out there were caribou everywhere. They were all over the trail, and just before the cabin I almost ran over two sleeping in the trail.
The trail was in pretty good shape given the low snow conditions. The first 8 miles to the junction were in fantastic shape, after that the the trail had just enough traffic to Beaver creek to be ridable with lowish pressure, where most of the traffic apparently turned around and the trail had several inches of light fluffy snow on it. Beaver creek had a bit of overflow, but I escaped without wet feet and only a slightly icy bike.
After a bit more overflow in the trees past the creek, I climbed up into a big open tussock field, where I lost the trail, eventually just giving up and pushed until the trail entered the trees and was easier to locate.
After the tussock field of doom, I followed a wonderful section of caribou groomed singled track to the cabin – several miles of nice packed narrow trail – yay!
(Sorry for the bad photo, the light was going..)
The evening in the cabin was relaxing, and in the morning two snow machines passed by taking away the nice caribou single track, but making the rest of the trail a lot nicer. The ride out was great, though fewer bou and more bou hunters. A few miles before we reached the trail head we ran into Ed(dy)’s old owner, Jodi of Dew Claw kennel, who was out on a training run, and stopped briefly for quick chat.
The drive back I enjoyed a nice post adventure glow, much happier with winter while the dogs snuggled. Yay for winter!
No more Meriwether??
It is at the bike shop, getting its hubs re-winterized. The fun part of winter just started for us, trails are finally getting enough snow to see some use. I hope winter is treating you well!
Glad to see you writing again. Yes, it’s been hard to motivate for any epic adventures so far this winter. Hopefully things will improve with this big snow dump.