twelve

Wow, what a ride tonight. DSR and MikeE came out for what turned out to be a super fun ride. Since it was a full moon, I had tossed around the idea of riding at the Boulder Res. It's not that great a place normally, but it's pretty fun on full moons. It's completely devoid of trees and you can usually ride all night without a lamp. Well, DSR committed himself to this evenings night ride on the stipulation that we didn't ride the Res as it's right by his house. Although my arm still hurts from all of his arm twisting, I told him that if he came up, we'd head west and ride in the forest.

We had zero snow in town and I heard reports that Hall Ranch was as bone dry as it appeared. No snow, but it was downright cold. We all met up at the shop at 7 to drive up into the hills. I thought it was cold in town, but it was really, really cold at the trailhead, around 7300'. On top of that, the snow line up north here seems to be about 7000'. We started the ride in bitter cold conditions and 1.5-3 inches of perfect dry white snow.

The snow and the full moon combined for fantastic conditions. Since we started the ride with a long climb, we all settled into a warm groove shortly. Shortly after connecting onto the singletrack part of the climb, we encountered some paw prints. Those suckers had to have been 4-5" around - bigger than the palm of my hand. Yikes! The tracks came and went for most of the rest of the climb. Since the snow was only a day and a half old, the tracks had to have been pretty fresh, too. Kitty has good taste in trails, though - this particular singletrack was finger licking good. We were just a tad nervous of kitty thinking the same of us!

We kept going without incident. The singletrack was superb. The fine line of trail, normally technical in the daylight was even more fun under cover of dark and snow. Timing on the ride was about right, too. My hands and body were toasty warm, but stopping and standing a couple of times in the powdery cold made my toes very, very cold. By the time we reached the bottom of the descent and the car, my toes were about ready to fall off. I ran in place to get the blood flow going back in my feet. We finally got the bikes loaded and were on our way. A quick look at the car thermometer was enlightening. 12 degrees.