on the eleventh day of bikeness

My friend Eric Barrett emailed me yesterday to suggest that I give Mt Spokane some fatbike consideration.  I'm not sure why, exactly, but I'd kind of written Mt Spo off as not having any potential after the outing up there on Faturday the 1st.  But before I was even done reading his email, it made total sense that I needed to get up there and do some exploring on this eleventh day.

I'd figured I was on my own, but when I woke up this morning there was this housebound, cry for help, "what are we gonna do today??" text message on my phone.  From John, of course.

So two dudes, one fatbike, one pair of snowshoes.  How could this work?  The solution came to us in about 5 seconds:  We would drive up and each take one mode of transportation and go our separate ways.  Then, after a set amount of time, we would meet up again, and swap modalities. Easy peasy.

Upon arriving, John headed out on snowshoes . . .

and I on bike . . .

The trail hadn't been groomed, but it has been heavily recreated upon over the last few days and there were nice rideable paths cut into the deep snow.

At Smith Gap, the trail is open to snowmobiles and we'd stopped and talked to a ranger about how he felt about us riding on the sno-mo trails and he was totally fine with it.  Boom.  Neither of us went any farther today, as we didn't have time, but now I'm really encouraged about the fatbiking possibilities up there.

My turn on the 'shoes was great - there are all kinds of trails cut through the woods and while it totally looks like I photoshopped myself into this picture, I can assure you that I was there, real as life.

Sweet helmet hair, dude.

Damn, it was good to get into the mountains again today.

I've now decided that a frozen pump track sesh on the 1st day of 2013 is a must, so I'm headed out this New Year's Eve to finish shoveling the track.  See ya tomorrow with some pump track pics to wrap up this 12 days gig, if all goes as planned.  Be safe tonight.

Old-school ski/binding at Bear Creek Lodge.  As in the kind I grew up on. Oy.