SMNDFBR - Biking in a Winter Wonderland

Bike bells ring

Are you listening

In the Park

Snow is glistening

A beautiful sight,

We're happy tonight

Biking in a winter wonderland

Gone away, are the mud throes

Here to stay, are the new snows

We ride a fat bike,

Cause that’s what we like

Biking in a winter wonderland

Another Saturday brought another Saturday Morning No Drop Fat Bike ride and like last time we had a birthday in the group. This time up it was Tyler's turn to bring in birthday treats in the form of caramel covered brownies, they were sticky but delicious.



Brownies eaten, crowds gathered and route planned it was time to roll. Big group today, at it's height there were 18-20 of us. Thing about Wilderness Park is people will join in and break off as the ride goes on, hasn't been a ride yet where we haven't met others out enjoying the trails.


While we didn't get near the snow that was in the forecast there was still plenty on the ground and unlike last weekend it has been cold enough to keep it frozen and still here.



Scooted on down the N Street Bikeway again, might have to make this a usual part of the ride when heading down to Wilderness Park.


So aero... never mind that 4+ inches of rubber or the 25+ lbs of bike.







Wilderness was in about as good of shape as I've ever seen it in the winter, just enough snow to cover the trail and it's been warm enough and ridden enough that the ice was minimal. It was running really fast, not spring/summer fast but fast for winter.


Had a pretty good showing of new faces today as well... even though these are not their faces, they did have them I assure you.


Tyler, petting a bush, maybe?


See, there are some faces with smiles on them. Big group, big, big group; gotta love that.


Made it to the troll bridge and Rick threw down a $5 climbing challenge to Russ, which of course was picked up by others as well.


The challenge was to ride up this incline, the simple part...


Then make the greater than 90 degree turn and make it all the way to the top. It doesn't look all that steep but it is, it's a challenge when it's dry so it was even more so in the snow.



A few tried and got halfway.


Some not quite that far but with much more impressive tumbles, in the end however, nobody made it up to the top and Rick kept his $5.


Stuck to the west side today which meant two creek crossings and it was flowing pretty good making things really slick.



Erring on the side of caution, we wisely didn't attempt to ride across and instead used some team work to get everyone across and up the other side safely.


Up and out of the creek bed and into the 14th Street parking lot and decided it was getting a bit too warm to safely ride the east side of Wilderness... we would have opted to ride the Jamaican trail back but since it's not opened we did not ride it back because that would just be wrong.



Being a much colder Saturday than last week, all it took was someone mentioning Crescent Moon and we were there. That hot java really hit the spot.

Looks like there is a chance of a wintry mix in the forecast for Thursday and Friday, I for one am hoping that changes to all snow or nothing at all so that the trails stay in good shape. Thanks once again to everyone who made it out for the ride, they just keep getting better.