Two weeks ago I was convinced we’d have rideable snow well into April. And then the weather turned. Our snow is virtually gone except for a lot of piles.
Over the weekend the studded tires came off the A-train. Looking back through last years pictures I discovered the studs came off two days earlier than last year. Back when I used to commute daily all year round I’d need to keep the studs on until mid-April most years. That’s when morning temps would get above freezing and stay there for good. Prior to that there is ice in the mornings from the previous days snow melt.
I tried out a new saddle bag this weekend. I’ve never used this type of bag. It was different. Not terribly stable. I finally looped the flap straps through my rear rack to stabilize it better. The bag itself is a very nicely made bag from Ellum Bag Works and sold by Hobo Pieces.
I rode on Skyline Parkway with overlooks of Duluth and Lake Superior. I had a view of the second Great Lakes freighter to leave the port since the shipping season started Friday. A Coast Guard Ice Breaker has been clearing shipping lanes. Ships on the move is a sign of Spring here on Lake Superior.
The weather has turned. It’s attempting to shift into the Spring thaw. This past week we had temps rising above the freezing mark and heavy rain on Wednesday. I figured the rain ended any chances of riding snow now.
After a night of lows in the teens I figured I needed to get out and see for myself if there was any rideable snow.
I discovered some spectacular riding. I was out before noon and before it reached the freezing mark. If you wait until it gets above freezing with the snow depth we still have, it becomes unrideable very quickly.
Only a half mile into this ride I stopped at the edge of the groomed trail to let a snowmobile go by. As I put my foot down on the snow just on the outside of the groomed part of the trail my foot punched through the snow and into a water filled ditch. I was wearing a low gaiter which prevented my boot from instantly swamping. But I didn’t get out without my boot getting a good soaking. It was only 29F degrees. Needless to say I chose to cut my ride short so as not to turn my foot into an icicle. I did stay out for an hour though.
This is what our front yard looked like as I was shoveling the latest 3 inch snowfall off our sidewalk. Our front yard is level with the sidewalk.
On Saturday I got in a nice ride on the local trails before the snow arrived. The temp was 34F degrees. It was the first day the temp had risen above freezing in more than two months. The trails were rapidly softening up.
With all this snow, I’ve been thinking we’d be able to ride the trails until April. All of a sudden the extended forecast is calling for temps in the upper 30’s with heavy rain midweek. Yesterday’s ride may have been the last ride on the trails unless we get another cold spell.
I’ll just have to wait and see what the weather brings.
I worked a half day today because I scheduled a plumber to come over and fix our basement sump pump. He was in and out in an hour. That left me with a free afternoon. Free to go fatbiking I say.
We had a record month for snow in February, 36 inches. It never really firmed up all month and was difficult to ride. On Sunday I rode the singletrack on the ridge above my house. The conditions were beginning to improve and was it was almost rideable.
With a winter storm coming this weekend I wanted to get out and ride today before the trails get buried again.
I don’t know what happened in the last four days, but the trail conditions went from fair to the best conditions I’ve ever ridden. That’s saying a lot because I estimate I’ve ridden 12-14,000 miles on snow on a fatbike over the last 13 winters.
Sunday I felt like everything took a huge effort. I had to push the bike up small rises and bumps. Gradual inclines were a struggle to keep moving forward. Today? Everything was effortless. The conditions were unusually fast. I rode every single inch, every bump and every hill. The first time for me on these trails. I never touched a foot down. And I rode twice as far with less effort.
I love March riding. It will change this weekend though. High winds and 6-9 inches of new snow are forecast. We could easily be riding snow into April.
So far in the month of February we’ve had two and a half feet of powdery snow fall on us. It has created conditions that are quite difficult to ride in. The groomed trails aren’t firming up, leaving a sugary snow that offers little traction. Sunday I tried to ride the Mission Creek Trails but made it less than one mile before taking a hard fall and bailing out on the nearby snowmobile trail. The snowmobile trail weren’t much better. But still, it was nice to be out in the sunshine.
Monday I was off for the Presidents Day holiday. I tried the Piedmont trails. They were just barely firm enough to ride. The day was sunny and felt warm with light winds blowing. It was great to be out again.
I still use a desktop computer for some of my computing needs. The computer shows me pictures “From This Day”. I like to click on it and see what I was doing on this day in past years. I specially enjoy pictures from the winter months. The computer has several thousand pictures that I’ve taken over the years. Mostly pictures of my bikes in beautiful surroundings. Here is a sample of what popped up yesterday for the date of January 21st.
Enjoy.
Arrowhead 135 Ultra training ride on the new Pugsley in 2007.-20F degree commute in 2011.“Shards” of ice on the Lake Superior Shore. 2012.First Pictures of my new Brompton S6L folding bike. 2013Lake Superior Sunrise on a bitter cold morning bicycle commute in 2014.Winter commuting set-up on my Custom A-Train Cycles Ultimate-Winter Commuting Bike 2015.
My rig resting on an all wooden timber bridge over the West Fork Chippewa River.
My friend Jeff and I had such a successful bikepacking trip together in August up in the Superior National Forest of Minnesota that we decided to go again. We traveled about the same time and distance as last time, about 90 minutes. This time we went east and south away from the south shore of Lake Superior rather than east and north up the northern shore of Lake Superior. Our destination was the remote north woods of the Chequamegon National Forest.
Our first couple of miles had us wanting to find out what was around the next corner.
Neither of us was at all familiar with this area. We based our planning off an article and route we found on bikepacking.com . The route was a three day route. We only had Saturday and Sunday so we decided to do an out-and-back route on the first leg of the route. We downloaded the GPS track onto our phones and used a GPS app that allows offline tracking. Important because we had no cell service in the National Forest. I’ve only owned a real smart phone for two years. This offline tracking technology was fascinating to me….and extremely helpful. We noticed on the map one section of the downloaded route didn’t follow any roads or recognizable trails. We were a bit nervous about that.
Our route from Cable, Wisconsin to Moose Lake and back.
The forecast was calling for rain on Saturday, but nicer on Sunday. Saturday morning had a huge system of storms going through the area. It was supposed to stop for the afternoon and redevelop for Saturday evening. We got very lucky. We drove through a huge deluge of rain just before arriving at the trail head. Then the sun came out and we never got rained on again for the rest of the trip. The day time temps were around 84F degrees and a little too humid for us. I personally don’t do well in hot, humid conditions. It should be in the mid-sixties not the mid-eighties this time of year.
Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival 40 mile mtb race.
Something we didn’t count on was having our route being used by 3,000 mountain bike riders riding in the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival 40 mile race. The race joined up with our route for about 2.0 miles on a narrow, muddy, rocky ATV trail. We ran into it when only the first 200 of 3,000 riders had come by. A detour for us would have meant at least an extra 15 miles. We asked the race volunteer what our options were. He said we could go on the course if we stayed to the side. The riders were 34 miles into the 40 mile race when we joined in with our loaded bikes. It was a bit crazy trying to stay out of the way and navigate the rocks and mud holes. It was a bit stressful. But now I can say I’ve ridden in the Fat Tire Festival Race….sort of.
Stopped to wipe the sweat off just after leaving the race course.
We left the race course about 5 miles into our 31 mile day. From then on we didn’t see more than a dozen vehicles for the rest of the trip and nobody other than the people in the vehicles. It started feeling remote very quickly.
The next six or seven miles was a section of relentless, short steep ups and downs. The area has seen a lot of rain the past two months and the road was a mix of gravel, ruts, and sections of sand. The fat tires I had were a good choice for this section.
Evidence of the heavy rains this area has seen.
The heat and humidity combined with grunting up the short steep hills had me soaked in my own sweat. Luckily the thick forest canopy kept the direct sunlight off us.
As we got closer to the section of the route that didn’t show any roads, we discovered we were in a section of the National Forest where the CAMBA trail system exists. The GPS Track took us right down some the nicest, flowiest single track I’ve ever ridden. It was fantastic riding that as part of our route.
Single track section .
Single track section .
Single track section .
Single track section .
Single track section .
Single track section .
Single track section .
Single track section .
Single track section .
Single track section .
By time we got off the single track trails we were about halfway and already feeling done fr the day. The hills and heat were wearing us down. The rest of the way was nice smooth gravel. The hills continued but weren’t as steep. There wasn’t more than a few hundred yards of flat ground the entire day. We had over 2,300 feet of climbing despite not having any one elevation change of more than 50 feet. We were constantly shifting gears to adjust our cadence to the continuous change in elevation.
The last five miles of day one were like this.
We started our day riding around 12:30 and reached our destination, Moose Lake NF Campground around 4:45.
The campground had 15 rustic sites. Only one site seemed to be occupied. The people at that site came back after dark and left in the morning before we got up. We picked a nice spot on the lake next to a small swimming beach. It was nice to be able to go for a swim to wash off the dirt and sweat. Since this is the north woods of Wisconsin we had to deet-up to keep the aggressive mosquitoes at bay.
Beautiful start to day two.
Saw the sign, didn’t see any Elk. This was on a 1/2 mile of paved road, the only pavement we rode the entire trip.
We took a lot of breaks during day two. This was the best break spot we found. Shady with a nice breeze blowing off the lake.
The only real mishap on this trip was a broken rear derailleur cable on Jeff’s bike. It happened about two miles before we got back to the car on a mostly downhill stretch. If it had happen earlier in the trip it would have been okay. I haven’t carried extra derailleur cables with me in 6 or 7 years. I just happened to throw some in my bag before I left for the trip. We would have been okay.
As grueling as this trip was, it has to be one of my favorite 2-day adventures I’ve done. I didn’t know what to expect from this area. I didn’t expect to like it better than the Superior National Forest, but it exceeded all my expectations. It was a memorable trip.
I did a post back in June about my first ever off-road bikepacking trip in June of 2007. That’s before anyone was calling it bikepacking. I meant to do more of those types of trips. Eleven years later and I was still reminiscing about that first trip and still hadn’t done a second one. I had a lot of ideas and plans. One of them included exploring the forest service roads of the nearby Superior National Forest. I knew there was NFS campgrounds scattered around that I could use as overnight stops. My adventure friend Jeff texted me in June and said he wanted to try bikepacking. We decided to start with a day trip to get a feel for the terrain and scout some possible routes.
Honeymoon Loop, Superior National Forest.
The day trip was a huge success and we were confident we could plan an overnight trip before Fall. Jeff texted me again in early August and pushed for a more concrete plan. It was good for me to have someone else urging me on with the planning. I had been hesitant to follow through due to my inability to do big efforts the past few years. I’m not used to scaling down my adventures to fit my conditioning and age. It’s a horrible adjustment to have to make. A plan was hatched and a tentative route was in place. This past weekend we set off despite a possible wet weather report. We had decided to drive up into the Superior National Forest on the Caribou Trail north of Lutsen. We parked the car at a snowmobile trail parking lot where the Caribou trail turns from pavement to gravel. We loaded up the bikes and headed in a northeast direction following NFS gravel roads and minimum maintenance dirt roads. We were heading in the general direction of three possible NFS campgrounds varying in size from 4 campsites to 35 campsites. The distances were 15, 19, and 23 miles. The goal was to reach the furthest one, but if the loaded bikes on rough roads was too much for us we had the closer sites to stop at. I consider this area to be remote. It’s possible to go for hours without seeing a car or person, there is no cell phone service, no services of any kind, and very few people.
There was heavy fog and drizzle on our way up. We set off in these conditions. The first 2.5 miles was on the Caribou Trail. A fairly “busy” main route into the forest.
Caribou Trail
It was quite muddy and we almost instantly started getting covered in mud. It was a nervous feeling thinking how muddy and wet we were about to get. Turns out this would be the worst of the mud spray.
Jeff got our first and only flat tire out of the way only 1.5 miles into the ride.At 2.5 miles we turned off onto FS161/Mark Lake Road. This unmaintained road was the most remote stretch we would ride. It was surprisingly well maintained with brush cut back. Any vehicle that would go down this would have to be have high clearance.
Mark Lake Road
An old, but active beaver pond. The dam alongside the road is covered in grasses and wildflowers.Me in the fog and drizzle on Mark Lake Road.Mark Lake Road
FS 158
Lunch stop at Eagle Mountain TrailheadThe last five miles was on The Grade. A lot of sections of washboard with very soft sides. Not as nice as it looks.Our destination for the night.Our GPS track for Day One.
My sleeping quarters.
Jeff’s sleeping quaters.
One of the two islands in Two Island Lake as seem from our campsite.
Only a hint of a sunset in the fog and smoke from Western Canada wildfires.
Breakfast and coffee.
Packed and ready for Day Two.Started our day with some washboard gravel. It was mostly downhill and only last 4 or 5 miles.
Our only section of pavement. It only last about two miles along the north shore of Devil Track Lake.Devil Track Lake looking moody.
Thompson Lake
Thompson Lake
Thompson Lake
Riding a ridge that dropped off on both sides.
Riding a ridge that dropped off on both sides.
Mark Lake Road on the return trip.
Mark Lake Road on the return trip.
Mark Lake Road on the return trip.
Mark Lake Road on the return trip.
Our GPS track with both days. The green way point is our start and finish. The red way point is our stop for the night.
It was a wonderful two day bikepacking trip. We did just over 50 miles total. We want to try and do at least one more in September. The only real challenges were some misfortune for Jeff. He had the only flat tire. He had a bolt wiggle loose and fall out on his rear rack. He was about to use a zip tie for a quick fix when I offered him one of my water bottle mount bolts. Jeff also took a tumble about 5 miles from the end. A mixture of mud and a rutted trail on a downhill section took him down. He had so much pain in his ankle he at first thought he had broken it. It wasn’t broken and he was able to ride it back to the car.
This time I’m not going to wait 11 years before my next bikepacking trip.
It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since I last rode a bicycle to work. For those readers who haven’t followed my previous blogs, I was known as the guy that would ride his bike to work every single day of the year no matter what the weather. From -32 degrees Fahrenheit to 101 degrees, from rain, to snow, to blizzard conditions to sideways sleet. I didn’t own a car from July of 2002 to March 2017. Bikes were my main mode of transportation.
Why did I stop riding bikes to work? That’s a long conversation. I’ll say this, it came down to changes in jobs and aging/health issues. Nothing serious. Back in 2014/2015 I hit a point I couldn’t recover well from five days in a row of bike commuting. I decided to save my limited energy for the recreational/adventure rides I love so much. Then in March 2017 I got hired at my present employer. I needed a car some days for the work I was going to be doing. So I bought a car. It’s the first car I’ve bought since 1995.
Recently I realized how much I was missing my bike commutes. I also realized I only need a car available to me at work 2-3 times a month. This past month I didn’t use it once during the work day. I decided it was time to get back into some limited bike commuting. This week I rode a bicycle to work and home both Monday and Tuesday.
I can’t tell you how fantastic it was to be riding a bike to work again. I was reminded of how alert I feel by the time I arrive to work. I’m more productive and just feel better emotionally and physically.
From 2001 to 2015 I worked for one employer. I had a secure place to park my bicycles. Thinking I may work there forever, every successive bike I bought got more and more expensive. This caused a dilemma for me at me current employer. There is no secure place to park a bike at this building. Or I should say, no place I felt was secure enough to leave my bike locked up all day. I thought if I could bring my bike in the building I have plenty of room in my office. But, my office is a long walk from the front door and requires me to go up one floor, navigate that floor before going back down one floor to where my office is located. I figured it best if I asked permission. I finally had the opportunity to broach the subject with our company CEO. She was completely on board with my request.
I didn’t have my Brompton in mind when I made the request. Once I thought about it, the Brompton is the perfect bike for this mission.
Once again, I am a bicycle commuter. It has made me very happy. I will be a part-time bike commuter, but I’ll take it.
What else is new? I purchased a couple of Revelate Designs bags for my Pugsley. Currently I use my Pugsley as my all-road/trail bike. A friend and I are planning a bikepacking overnighter before Fall. Even though I have front and rear racks and an assortment of panniers to choose from for the Pugsley, I thought I’d invest in some of the fancy dancy bikepacking gear.
Handlebar Harness and Egress Pack from Revelate Designs.
My bikepacking set-up circa 2008.
I haven’t test loaded them yet. I’m looking forward to using them. Stayed tuned for a trip report once this trip happens (might be mid September).
Here in Duluth and Northeastern Minnesota, one never knows when winter will end. Since I moved here in 2001 we’ve had snow to ride as late as the last week of April. There’s been a couple of years since I started fatbiking in 2006 that there’s been continuous snow pack from mid-December until mid-April. Then there was the Spring of 2012 when we had a complete thaw in the middle of February and not any snow the rest of the season. That was crazy unusual.
This winter started out slow for accumulating snow. We had just enough to cover the ground starting in mid-December. Thanks to a lot of bitter cold temps, it has never melted off despite the lack of any base. There’s been just enough to ride. January was very cold, but absolutely no new snow. Then February we got a couple of feet of snow, mostly in the last week of the month. That has set us up for two weeks of fantastic snowbiking. This past week has been dry and sunny. We’ve been losing a few inches every day.
I’ve learned to get out when the conditions are good because you never know when it will be the last time out on snow for the year.
The above picture is from a great ride last Saturday. It was warm, around the freezing mark. With no wind and the sunshine, it felt like summer. The best part of March riding on days like this are riding with one or two layers, no hat and no neck gaitor, yet be able to stay completely comfortable. With no wind, stops can last as long as I like without getting cold.
Last Sunday was the switch to daylight savings time. I was looking forward to after work rides with enough sunlight for a ride lasting a couple of hours.
With the temp again around the freezing mark and dropping as the sun went down, conditions were fantastic.I had a great ride on the second day of Daylight Savings Time.
The rest of the week weren’t as good for snow conditions. I didn’t get out again after work. We had sunny days with temps in the upper 30’s and lower 40’s. This made for very soft, and wet, conditions. Although, we didn’t lose all our snow, it was quickly disappearing.
Last night we had a low of 17F degrees. Cold enough to really firm things up. I am not a morning person, but I knew if I wanted to some good riding I would have to get out early before the temps started getting too far above the freezing mark.
I managed to get myself up and out by 9:45. The temp had already warmed to 32F degrees. By the time I would get back home it would be 44F degrees. By 3 o’clock it was up to 52F degrees. Making a plan paid off. I got out, had a great ride, and may have gotten in one last ride before the snow is no more. No snow in the forecast. It’s likely we could lose most of our snow before it snows again, if it snows. Once the base is gone, it’s usually a sloppy mess if we get more snow.
Here’s a map and elevation profile from today’s ride:
It’s been a good winter. I’ll try to summarize it in another post.
four season cycling 