Riding snowmobile trails on the mountain

On New Year's Eve, Cinder Bloch, Chrissy, Colleen and I headed up to the mountain to ride some snowmobile trails.

While we were driving up, I wondered if Cinder Bloch would be able to get his little Golf into the snowy parking lot. A minute later, my phone started ringing.

"Hey, you have four wheel drive right?"

The entrance to the lot is downhill, so he didn't have any trouble getting in:

Colleen's photo

After the crusty Park Service guy helped me push, and gave Cinder Bloch a lecture about the importance of using real snow tires instead of all-seasons, he got back in his plow truck and told me to move the Danger Ranger out of his way. I did. Then we assembled our bikes and hit the snowy trail.

Also Colleen's photo

Cinder Bloch and Chrissy were both on fat bikes, while Colleen and I were on our 29ers.

Colleen's photo, not Colleen's fat bikes

I figured that if we stayed on the packed snowmobile stuff, Colleen and I would be mostly ok. I was mostly right.

We pedaled up Fire Tower Road, then dropped down into some snowmobile stuff. The snowmobilists had left a bunch of rollers on the trail from twisting the throttle. I giggled a little while we ripped down the snowy pump track.

Unfortunately, after almost 2000 feet of descending, we had to go back up. That's where things got less fun on a normal bike. Cinder Bloch and Chrissy spun their beasts up the hills easily. With her low gears, Colleen could still get up most stuff.

On my single speed, I had trouble. Which made everyone else very happy:

Intentionally resting. Photo stolen from Cinder Bloch

We rode down and down some more, then popped out on some frozen pavement at the bottom of the mountain. At which point we realized that we were lost:

Of course I know where we are. I have a map.

Then I remembered that I had a magic phone with the GPS technologies. I consulted it, pinpointed our location, then led the group in the wrong direction. We ended up on County Line Road, which was full of dickheads going to the ski resort. People passed fast and spayed salt far. Since I had been letting air out of my tires to try to get traction all day, I probably had about 5 psi at that point. It made the pavement feel like peanut butter.

We finally made it back to the snowmobile road that went towards the cars. But it was a long climb back, and the snow was starting to soften up. By the second pitch, everyone but Cinder Bloch was pushing:

A long walk. Cinder Bloch photo

After almost an hour of pushing our bikes, we hit the summit. The wind was blowing so hard up Rt. 31 that I struggled to pedal down the hill to Fire Tower. My fingers started to tingle and my face burnt. A few seconds later I made the turn back to the truck.

The ride was a sweet way to end the year. Since the conditions were good, our standard mountain bikes were fine about 75 percent of the time.

To eliminate the times that they sucked, I've got a new project going:

Does not involve handlebar mounted coffee cups.

Unicycling fresh pow

I think I tweaked something in the rotator cuff area of my shoulder durring the Dirty Dozen last month, so I've been taking it easy on the bike.

And hitting it hard on the uni:

Unicycling fresh snow, bro from montana miller on Vimeo.

It's fun. And I'm going to go out and shred some more while the snow is still falling. Happy festive days folks.

Bikepacking out of Ohiopyle

This is recycled from the work blog. Original post here.

The Quebec Run Wild Area is a really cool system of trails to the south of Ohiopyle. I've been looking at some maps for a while, and figuring out a way to ride from town to the wild area on single-track and double-track the whole way.  

So last Saturday I loaded up my pack (the Adventure Satchel XXL) and started the climb out of the valley.

  

The trail that goes into Quebec is a ten-mile piece of single track called the White Tail Trail. My plan was to ride a gravel road out of Ohiopyle, take a trail through some state gameland, hit the White Tail Trail into Quebec, watch a cyclocross race that was going on near Quebec, then camp and ride back into work the next morning.

The climb out of Ohiopyle was pretty brutal with a loaded pack. Since I was on that stupid big gear I race on, I couldn't stay in the saddle. And since I had 35 pounds of camping gear on my back, it wasn't easy to pedal out of the saddle either.

 

But I made it to the top and into the gamelands. A few miles in, I saw about 40 trucks parked in the woods. At that point, I realized that it was the first day of bear season, and I was wearing a woolly black shirt.

The rest of the ride through the hunting zone was less than relaxing. When I got to the entrance of the White Tail Trail off of Skyline Drive, I saw more hunters. Since I had no desire to be mistaken for an emaciated bear and shot, I decided to ride the road the rest of the way to the cross race. But at least now I know that the trail to Quebec does exist. It even has fresh blazes. I'll just have ride it when there's less firepower in the woods. But buzzing along Skyline Drive wasn't so bad:  

A couple hours later, I made it to the cross race. I hung out for a while and heckled some people. Especially Cinder Bloch, whose bicycle choice was a little suspect:

Photo by Fred Jordan

Then I started the long climb back up the ridge. I made it to my camping spot above Uniontown just before dark, and got a little fire going.

I knew it wasn't going to rain, so I didn't bring a tent. I sat next to the fire and looked out at all the bright lights a few miles below. Ate two pots of Ramen, burned up all my firewood, and drank the contents of the flask I brought along. I was hoping that I would be drunk enough to sleep all night without noticing the cold (see simulated summer.)

That worked for about two hours. Then I woke up. It was 25 degrees, and the wind was ripping across the overlook I was sleeping on. I wrapped my ground cover around myself, hoping that it would keep some heat in.

It didn't. But it did keep some moisture in, and soaked my sleeping bag.

I drifted in and out of shivering sleep for the next few hours, then at 4:30 I decided to get up and start riding back to town. The sun was starting to rise when I got back to Skyline Drive, and the morning was bright clear. 

Pretty, but bright clear mornings are cold mornings. I thought my fingers were going to freeze and snap off as I descended the mountain back to Ohiopyle.

When I got back to town, I spent a long time thawing myself out in front of a little oil heater before I opened the store. Overall, it was a pretty good mini-bikepacking trip, even though hunting season kept me from riding all the trails I planned on. I ended up riding 45 miles the first day, and 15 the next morning. Not a bad little adventure from the front door.