Back on the Red Bike!

After a few days indoors with the family -- no takers for road hockey, instead we played Settlers of Catan, Water Works, and I watched some early morning World Junior hockey with my bro -- it was back home to some warmed temperatures in Calgary. Yay for the deep freeze moving on.

The river wins ...

Yesterday I took Sante for a long walk in Bowmont and then got on the Norco for a pathway ride. A little chilly on the hands and some icy spots to manage but it felt good to be pedaling.

It's the middle of the night.

Today my adventure friend, Michele, was keen to try out the mountain biking potential in West Bragg Creek. Sante and I were in! (After a middle of the night Canada vs USA game and follow on sleep.) We rolled into the parking lot around 11am and -12C. Brr ... but things warmed up to -1C in time. I couldn't get warm even through the first climbs but eventually I was peeling off some layers. We headed up Ranger Summit to start. The going was good for a little while with hard-packed snow and zero ice. Then we hit some loose corn snow for a while. We struggled a ways up and considered turning back and regrouping for a hike. But I wanted to try going a little further to see if things improved. And they did! For the most part we were on some well-packed snow (thank you snowshoers and hikers), occasionally some dirt (very little), and never any ice. Perfect! It was some tough work to pedal through and the narrow hard-pack was easy to veer off of but we made it to the first lookout and had a quick snack. Then we decided to head back down and check out one of the road trails that are track set for skiers.

Before we got heading downwards we ran into a couple on Surly bikes. Fat fat tire bikes! Susan was doing a big sell job on the fat tire bikes but we were having a blast on the mountain bikes. If I'm buying another bike any time soon it's not gonna be one I could ride only 6 times a year! I might be in for renting one out in Canmore though and checking out Goat Creek Trail one of these days. I've seen Rebound out there with rentals at the trailhead.

The ride down Ranger Summit was over way too soon! What a blast. It felt so good to be back on the mountain bike riding back down what we'd climbed! Smiles smiles smiles! And not just on Sante. Then we did some spinning on one of the wide trackset trails (our tires barely left tracks and there's plenty of flat hard-pack between the double set tracks) ... Moose something or other, before heading back into town for some grub. Great day outside.

 

 

 

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