More Snow Biking

For the second week in a row, snow made it impossible to ride on the road on Saturday so it was time to do more snow biking. This week I decided to ride the canal path from Princeton to Rocky Hill. The ground was below freezing when the snow fell which made the snow more icy than last week. The path had about 2 inches of snow on it which made it another tough ride.

I was glad I still had the knobby tires on the mountain bike as I needed the extra grip. There were a few icy puddles under the snow that caused a little fish tailing but I managed to keep upright for most of the ride. I almost lost it on the spillway where the ice on the jagged stones on the spillway were as slippery as an ice rink. After trying to ride it for 10 feet and almost falling twice I put my feet down and walked the rest of the way over the spillway. I didn't want to risk breaking anything.

After the spillway the rest of the ride to Rocky Hill was uneventful. There weren't many people on the trail so it was a quiet ride where I could concentrate on enjoying the scenery.

One way back I stopped at the dam to take my usual picture of the red house in Kingston.

It was there that I noticed the strange spider cracks in the ice like shown in my picture at the top of this post. I assume something like falling ice from the tree caused these. I was only on the trail for a little over an hour an a half but according to my average heart rate it was a pretty good work out. Hopefully the weather will get a little better so I can do a little road riding over the Christmas break.

The Line between Fun and Stupid

There is a fine line between fun and stupid. I will confess to being close to the line and have sometimes been little over it. This weekends snow made it hard to get a ride in but I was determined. I try to ride as much as I can in the winter. If it is too cold to go on the road then I will mountain bike on a trail. We got somewhere between 4-6 inches which would make it hard to ride even on the trails. However because the ground was warm it didn't really stick to much to roads and paths.

I sent out an email to a few people but didn't get any takers because they were concerned about slipping and falling in the snow. I was concerned too but have ridden enough in the snow to think I could do it. My plan was to ride the Lawrence Hopewell trail starting from the parking lot on Princeton Pike. When I got there is was just below freezing so quickly got ready and hit the trail. I road down the road for the first mile because the trail was snow covered and looked mushy.

Once on the actual trail it was slow going but not hard. The trail had somewhere  between no snow and a couple of inches on it. The snow was very powdery so it wasn't hard to ride through. Since the pavement and ground had been warm before the snow there was no ice to speak of.

I was being cautious since I it was hard to see the path in spots. On most of the paths although there were some foot prints there wasn't any bike tracks. When I got to Mercer Meadows I saw some other mountain bike tracks in the snow. After a little while I saw three people on mountain bikes. I caught up to them when I got to the pole farm and it turned out to be Chris, Ken and some one else I didn't know. They had started from the dog park by Rosedale Lake and were doing an 8-10 mile loop.

I hung with them to for a while heading towards the lake. The snow was a little thicker here so it was slow going. Riding with them added a few miles to the trip as they took some tails that took me off the main trail. Eventually I left them and continued on my own.

The Rosedale lake area was very scenic with the snow. By the parking lot was a lot of kids sledding down the little hill on the other side of the lake.

It was at this point that I realized that this was going to be a very tiring ride. Riding the 20 mile LHT loop is a good work out without the snow. With the snow it was going to be a longer ride than I wanted to do. I kept going and made my way along a couple or roads where there is no trail. These roads were actually a little icy and more dangerous than the trail. When I got to Wargo road I decided to not do the northern part of the trail because that would have meant riding  a long stretch on Carter Rd which I didn't want to do because of the conditions. Instead I took Bayberry then a quick section on Carter to get to the ETS center. I stopped on Bayberry to take a couple of pictures for Laura

Cows....

....and sheep

From ETS I jumped back on the LHT trail. There was still snow on the trail and my legs were feeling tired but I kept going because I knew I wasn't far from the end. The last stretch on Province Line was much better this time since they added a new path along the road so I didn't have to deal with traffic.

By the time I got back to the start I was pretty beat but glad I did it. I spent 3 hours on the trail and it was fun but a little tougher than I expected. If I road this trail again in the snow I would probably do a shorter loop. Still I think I kept to the fun side of the line this time. I'm sure I'll have chances to hit the stupid side some other time this winter.