Snow Biking

So far this winter is shaping up to be a cold and snowy one a little like last year. We had a big snow storm right after Christmas and a few small ones since. This have left the roads unrideable and with the temperatures not getting much above freezing it could be a while before I am able to ride on the road again.

This has lead me to try out mountain biking in order to continue biking this winter. Chris, Laura, Mike and others have been doing this for years and it looked like fun so I decided it was time to give it a try. I don't have a mountain bike and did want to keep borrowing other peoples so I went the Trenton Bike Exchange. The Trenton Bike Exchange has a lot of old used bikes that are relatively cheap $25 to $200. They didn't have a lot of choices in mountain bikes that fit me. I ended up getting an old Giant mountain bike that is at least 10 years old and a little beat up but is good cheap bike that will let me try mountain biking an see if I really like it.

After cleaning up the bike and adding some new pedals I headed to Mercer Park this past Sunday. We had just gotten a couple of inches of snow which was enough to be fun but not too deep to make riding impossible. Chris and Mike M joined me for the ride which is good since they know the trails better than I do. They called me a snow virgin and did seem to take some joy at the fact that I hadn't ridden in snow before which meant they were going to enjoy watching me fall on my ass.

Riding in the snow was fun but hard. I don't have a lot of experience riding mountain bikes so my handling abilities are not that good on smooth dirt let alone slippery snow. Keeping my balance was tough especially in deep snow. I went down a number of times which I'm learning is just part of mountain biking. As Mike said "when you fall on a road bike its called a crash, when you fall on a mountain bike it is just a fall". Luckily the snow was still soft and fluffy.

It was really pretty riding through the snow although I was concentrating on keeping from falling. We ended up going around the other side of the lake and for the most part the snow was only a couple of inches deep but there were spots where the drifts were deep so we did a bit walking. There were also spots where there was a lot of a ice under the snow which were impossible to ride through.

Chris's mountain bike skills again impressed me. He seems to be able to ride though almost any thing and was a lot faster than I was. It was cold and windy but being in the woods blocked the wind. Riding a mountain bike is hard work especially in the snow so I warmed up pretty quick and was never really was cold.

By the time we got to the other side of the lake we were a little tired so we took an easier way back. We ended up on the paved bike path which was snow covered but ridable until we got near the tennis courts where the drifts were too deep to keep riding. We switched to the road for the rest of the way back to the boat house. This was the only time on the whole ride that I felt how windy it really was.

We ended up spending over 2 hours riding/walking in the snow. I was a little tired and sore. My wife thought I was crazy to go riding in the snow but it was a fun time. I got to test out the bike and do a different type of riding. I can't say I'm a mountain biker yet but I am not longer a snow virgin I am a snow novice.