Mtn Mike

Winter solstice ride:

noglider 

The 2nd and 3rd pictures look like fun. But the 1st one seems to show ice in the street. Or am I wrong?

Mtn Mike

There were some icy spots but it's not as bad as it looked. The temperature there was about 32-33 degrees so what you're seeing in pic#1 is probably slush.

twiant

sweet pics

Sixty Fiver

Here's some from 2008...

Machka 

If I could set up a camera to take photos of myself trying to ride a mtn bike, I'd post them here. We're in the depths of winter now.

noglider 

Machka, what kind of weather do you have in the winter? And where are you? I am under the impression that Australian winters aren't terribly cold, even in Tasmania.

Hypno Toad

Winter ride in most places, but in Minneapolis this is spring! First skinny-tire ride for 2015, to our favorite destination - Minnehaha Falls. Next month we'll be able to get crab cakes and Surly beer at Sea Salt.

ricohman

TroN0074

Touring the Lakes on a winter day around Lansing MI with the Lansing Bike Party! & some ice fisher man. It was party all the way.

auldgeunquers

Here are some from this winter.



Got my first set of studded snows this winter. I LOVE THOSE TIRES! And I have a new favourite winter sport.

Then Monday came ... 10c below freezing Monday AM so I went out for a last "real winter" ride for the year.

By mid afternoon Monday the temps had climbed above freezing and have not looked back.

So - got my vintage skinny tire commuter out today as most of the main roads are ice free. - WOW! Am I ever fast now! I ride like the wind. I feel like Superman on wheels. I may have to go buy me some spandex. ...

bgav

One week of winter left. Roads are in rough shape. Got out 3X this week, first time riding outside since November. It was warmer Tues & Wed with lots of run-off, puddles & potholes. Today is was chilly and some black ice where the shade was heavy all day.

chadwick

Corona (aka Rollins) pass is a high-mountain pass that crosses the continental divide between Boulder and Winter Park, Colorado. it was the the only way the trains went over the mountains until the Moffat Tunnel was built in the late 1920s.

Today, you can drive up the pass in the summer-time in a high-clearance vehicle, mountain bike it, and in the winter it becomes a high-volume snowmobile route. I'm also one of the crazy people that ride the snow bike up it.

For the most part, it is a relatively easy ride. It's 2-3% grade most of the way, and well packed and groomed for the snowmobilers. Depending upon where you start though, the early part of the ride is much harder. The easiest access point for me is a trail called Buck Creek, which is more of a 6-10% grade, and on snow, that is brutal.

On the route I took yesterday, it was about 8 miles up and 2,000 ft of climbing. The challenging thing about this ride is that you will sweat hard on the way up, even if it is cold out, but coming down you've got to deal with having cold, wet skin, the wind, and lack of a high heart-rate on the way down. Try as I might, I am not a skilled enough rider to go real fast downhill on the snow without wiping out. Luckily, since we're in spring conditions, yesterday was perfect. It was actually hot on the way up (temperature in the 28-30º range), but on the way down it had crossed the freeze line and there was enough snow I wasn't cooling off too much. It made for a really pleasant ride. When I last did this in January, I had some mild frost-nip during the long trip down.

The Strava ride is here: https://app.strava.com/activities/268203071

A couple of panoramas of at the top near the ridge of the divide. You can see the snowmobiles still head up to the top of the ridge and over, but at this point I was too wore out to climb that grade. If you zoom in closely, you can actually see three crazy para-skiers doing their thing right along the ridge. Fun! The other panorama that looks down-valley is looking at Winter Park Resort and the town, to the right, and Fraser, to the left.



Since this route follows the old rail line, there is a lot of old railroad history there. Right before tree-line is the famous R-i-flesight Notch railroad trestle (dashes to avoid the dumb censor). You can see it in this picture, but enough snow has fallen to completely obscure the fence that keeps people off of it.


Now, compare to that to the same point in January, where a good 2-3' less snow had fallen.


There are a ton of amazing snow-bike and summer mountain-bike rides to do in this valley. You should come visit

Hypno Toad

Funny you should say that... I just told the wife that this is on my summer to-do list: bikes in CO. We take a lot of trips to Copper Mtn in the winter with snowboards and skis. But never bring bikes.

Thanks for the great post and photos! That looks like a ride I'd love to take with my Pugsley. Although, as flat-lander, I wonder how I'd do mashing pedals at 11,000 ft on a fatbike.

chadwick

I moved up here from sea level 3 years ago, and came up to ride in the summer a lot. It's actually not bad at all. If you are racing, or really pushing yourself, you will definitely notice your top-end decrease and your ability to soak up grades decrease. But that ride I mentioned above is a relatively easy, fast one. 2-4% grades won't tax you much more than at home. 8%+ grades... yes, you will definitely really, really notice.

Let's take the Leadville 100 course as an example of worst case... my house is at 8500 ft, and even still, once the altitude goes over 12k ft, any steep grade (10%+) at all will max me out almost immediately and it takes a big longer to recover. Before I did that race, I was confused as to why people were walking some sections...now I know Grade + altitude.

The old rules about the first 48 hours after you arrive at altitude, or 10 days after, being your most effective are true, as well as hydrating well. Your pug on any of the more gently graded old rail-lines would be a blast.

For reference, here's the full Corona Pass ride I did on the Moonlander in the summer last year. It was actually my 2nd fastest ride up the hill. The big tires made some of the dodgy sections much easier to just roll over. https://app.strava.com/activities/161763991