April is Arctic Man month and most folks head out to Summit the beginning of the week to make sure they get there with plenty of time to ride and play. Since I’m not a big fan of drinking and partying or at least I haven’t been for a while, I posted an unplanned ride in the Whites on the FST web site to see if anyone else was interested. Turns out I’m not the only one who stayed home during AM week and with the rumors about 9 to 12 inches of fresh snow it was worth a look. So 9 of us meet up at Chatanika Lodge for breakfast and some planning.
Of course 2 of those were John M and Jim who aren’t riding this season do to physical ailments, but 7 of us decided to ride out from the lodge and head towards the Pipeline and see if the snowfall we got this last week was still there and as deep as I had heard.
It didn’t start out to good, the first couple of miles we had snow on both sides of the trail, but as we got farther along in the valleys I was beginning to wonder why I was riding my sled and not my ATV. The trail turned into a white line, kind of like the divider line on the highway, a nice pretty strip of color (in our case white) with blacktop on both sides (brown for us).
Fortunately as soon as we hit the Pipeline the snow conditions improved. Not the best I’d seen but better then the valley we just came out of.
Once we started heading up towards the ridges the snow got great. Lots of powder on top of a good base, so the rumors were true, let the good time roll.
The farther along we rode the better it got.
So it turned out to be a good ride and great day for my last local ride of the season. Not bad considering it was April 12th and a low snow year. Next trip is down to Cantwell with the wife and Grandson.
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