Ice Bike to Gunsight

My latest winter bike incarnation has been christened!  It's actually quite tailor made to winter riding, real long wheelbase is forgiving when things get squirrely and it feels really stable.  Matt and I snagged just under 5 miles at FFD on Friday evening.  Conditions were actually really good, but only on snowmachine trails.  Singletrack has been getting basically no traffic to date so those are all a no go.



I got to test my lights in a deep freeze and they performed as well as they needed to.  My hands were frozen solid long before the battery was in danger of dying.  I was trying out some Descente "winter" cycling gloves that I snagged on Bonktown recently.  I have used them doing other activities outdoors lately to great effect but I have a new theory that there is no such thing as an effective winter cycling glove.  I am going to either have to ride wearing my mittens that I wear skiing or get some of these.

OR

Make my own bar mitts.  I had a stroke of genius shortly after the ride (or maybe just a stroke) and I think I might be able to fashion something awesome out of something I have laying around the house.  Could be ill advised or just ILL.  Time will tell.  Be on the lookout for Manarea's first wicked in depth How-To post if I can pull it off.

Saturday I brewed some more beer, went to the dump, various other jibba-jabba and then found out that evening that Cannon was still riding amazing and I had missed out on some serious awesome.  I thought for sure based on the crust situation around the house that the woods were locked up tight.  Apparently that is not entirely true.

Sunday I was able to meet up with Jim for a planned stab at Gunsight.  Finally getting a shot to get on it from the top.  I was very excited to finally get that all figured out.  I'm glad I went with Jim the first time.  Joe and I had been contemplating making a go at it when we were in the zone last weekend and I can safely say if we had we would have been SCREWED.  Getting over to Gunsight is pretty counter intuitive in several spots and we would have been wandering around for a long time.  Even having done it while attempting to take serious mental notes at every step of the way I am only 65% sure I could nail it on the next try.  But knowing what I know now we might get a little lost but not too bad and we'll never be in danger...maybe.

Gorgeous terrain off that side.  So cool being over there on a clear sunny day.  AND for the first time I actually got to see Cannon's namesake.  I'm trying to think back and I can't remember if I knew there was a rock outcropping that looked like a cannon right at the top of Cannon Cliff or if I always just took for granted why Cannon was called Cannon.  Oh well I saw it, it was cool.  No pic cause I suck.

The line itself was cool, nice and steep with some technical spots.  Natural half pipe drainage features towards the bottom and cool little spots with downed trees and other debris that make for interesting riding.

Jim and I also got on a new line over on Mittersill (hard to imagine there is still new stuff to find).  The snow sucked, but the terrain was incredible.  So many cool features and surprisingly steep for where it is located.  Ended up dumping down into lower Stinger so we knew the out and were good to go.  Gonna be a great new line to hit when things get deep again. And just think in another post or two I'll have footage to go along with all this crappy text!