Cold ride

I went for a nice mountain bike ride up on Soapstone with my brother this Saturday, and it was a wee bit chilly! The thermometer in my truck read 14 degrees as I drove to the Hopkins road parking spot, and the the worse part was that most of my cold weather gear was still up in Vermont where I had forgotten it after skiing over Christmas. I had to wear some old ski gloves, and I didn't have my balaclava to keep my head warm. It turned out that staying warm wasn't an issue, as there was just enough snow to make it really tough to pedal.

There were some spots where a jeep had gone through, and riding in the tracks where the snow was packed was a little tricky. It was much more icy and slick, and definitely a lot of work to stay upright. Then we hit the trail where there weren't tracks and it got MUCH harder. I would say there were about 3 inches of snow with a crust on it that we would break through and have to continuously spin the tires out of its grip. It was like riding in really sticky thick mud, a lot of effort without a lot of movement.
We headed over the the Home Depot trail since I wanted to show my brother a couple fun lines over the ridge in the trail. After taking a couple runs over this rock, we decided to turn around as our legs were just about shot at this point. All of the uphill lines were pretty much impossible to ride since it was tough to get any momentum. This was close to where I had crashed pretty hard the week before, but with the snow it was way to difficult to ride fast enough to get hurt! Even heading down steep inclines we had to pedal to keep moving as the snow would suck in your wheel and slow you down. It was a great workout, 2 hours of constant pedaling without the ability to coast at all keeps the legs and lungs burning. Good times!!