Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Bird on a Fat Wire ....




Over the past week Squamish and the Howe Sound has been getting bombarded with some of the biggest snow storms in recent memory. It's only the second week of December and the start to the ski season is already becoming legendary. Sure.... it's not unusual to receive a big snowfall in December but it usually warms up during the storm cycle and ends with rain. This time it didn't leaving Squamish under a deep blanket of snow. Over the past few seasons I've been pushing the boundaries of what kind of snow conditions our fat bikes could actually operate in. Brett and I decided to check out some of Squamish's steepest trails in the higher elevations. It was obvious the depth at nearly 1000m was likely near a meter after the weekend's big dump so cold blower pow was what we would be dropping into.


                                          
This is what we woke up to Sunday morning at sea level....


Brett made a quick call to his brother who lives off the grid near the top of the Diamond Head Road. He'd spent most of the day pulling cars out of ditches on the way up to the Paul Ridge trailhead. He was now our Fat Bike shuttle....          

 
 


Good times on the ride up would be a slight understatement. Our Norco Carbon Ithaqua's were ready for a deep snow assault!      


We tested the snow consistency and depth capabilities on the road before dropping in....    


Our upper trail choice was "Bird on a Wire". It's a beautiful steep fall line single-track that we figured would do the job....  


We were right.... Steep was the answer!  





Occasionally there were a few of these....

 
 




Crown deep conditions on amazingly capable bikes made it a fantastic day on some of Squamish's best trails....