Tuesday Night Snow Ride, September 30th, 2008

By Tom Clark

I got to the ski hut on UAF west ridge, and besides the usual Geoff O. and Dave J., Eric Troyer and Ben Barton were there. Automatically, this became a fun ride because: Ben raises the bar on what is to be attempted, and Eric yells a lot. First thing we did was go down the Bicycle Bumps trail, and Eric said that there was a side trail to the left that someone has been building 'features' on that he wanted us to see.

Indeed, about 50 feet into the BB trail, we swung left. There was a bridge, built out of nearly rotted birch. I rode across it, fully expecting to have the thing collapse under me. A few feet later, there was another one, with a crown and camber shift partway through. Incredibly, I cleaned the thing. The next one was a simple bridge, but there were a few displaced or broken logs, but I thought that I might make it across. Nope. Two or three other logs broke, and I fell to my death. Actually, I wasn't hurt, but hey, it could have happened. After getting laughed at, we looked at the next feature. After riding to the end of it, the rider would have a drop of about eight feet. Not a one of us even thought of trying it, and it looked as though it was disintegrating faster than it was being built. We noticed that the thing was held together with twine. Ye Gods. I hope nobody gets mangled on that thing.

We rode the rest of the BB trail, coming out on the little road to the T field, which we followed. We cut across the bottom of the T feild, and commenced on a single-track trail hunt. We'd find a trail going uphill, and follow it, find another trail going down, do that, back and forth for a couple of trips. There were some fine log piles to ride over, and while it is true that they can be ridden over going uphill, it is lots easier going downhill. We ended up going down the Narrow Trail, the one that is pretty close to Miller Hill road. Lotsa places to bang both hands on the handlebars while trying to navigate through the black spruce. When we regrouped at the bottom of that trail, Dave James observed that the stupid factor was going up pretty rapidly... Had to agree. There was a lot of yelling, mostly from Eric, but Geoff pitched in too. After I rode over a pile of sticks, I heard Eric behind me: "I'm too old for this! .....Aaaaaa..... Aaaaiiiiiii!!!" Picture what you will.

Ben took his leave of us, but we tried to do him proud by taking the next pointless and obviously difficult singletrack that we could find, so long as we hadn't been on it already. We ended up doing some interesting figure-eights out there. Whenever we paused, two things would happen: Geoff would find a tree to lean against so he wouldn't have to put his foot in the snow (hella time getting clipped in), and RB would start fetching sticks or logs or whatever was around. We crossed Yankovitch and took the Skarland trail alongside the Musk Ox farm, then went straight instead of turning into the woods. This took us up to Knottingham road, where I've never been. Wow. Anyway, we rode Knottingham back out to Dalton, and took the Skarland trail back to the Musk Ox farm, and back across Yankovitch, to the T field, and back up the Bicycle Bumps trail. At the top, Dave said that on one of the steep Bumps, he got partway up, lost traction and put a foot down, only to have to roll and hop backwards back down to the bottom. Pretty good trick, though once he got to the bottom, he fell on his ass. Still, if that was the only time he fell, he did really good. I went over a few times, mostly because of trying to ride up the log piles.

We've already established where to meet next week, if the conditions hold (meaning not horribly cold, and only two or three inches of snow). We'll be riding the trails in the Isberg Recreational Trail area. I think that I'll bring both battery packs with me, as we are now riding in the dark for almost the entire ride. Who knows, with a little luck and careful lack of planning, it might turn into a stupid ride!