And it was a cold start and low snow. Rumors are going around about snow here and snow there and then you hear they got 3 feet at Summit and it was all blown away within 24 hours. And now we have lots of impatience folks just itching to ride.
So we meet at Chatanika Lodge and had breakfast. Me, I was late, not my usual habit, being late that is, but I had enough time to get a quick breakfast in thanks to Ronnie feeling sorry for me and cooking fast :supperhappy: Thank you sir.
We had 15 riders show up and I was pretty sure that with that many rigs we’d overflow the limited parking area they have at 42 mile Steese, so we rode out from the lodge and headed down the Orange trail. For those of you who don’t know, Chatanika has a nice color coordinated trail system, and today we felt Orange, of course we could have been in a blue, green or red mood, but Orange was the color of the day.
A couple things about the Orange trail; it doesn’t cross the river, tends to get use more and is easy to follow. However, it also follows the valley bottom to the Pipeline, an important fact to remember as it also gets the least amount of snow :sympathy:
But I don’t think anyone cared, so off we go and we lose our first casuality about 4 miles down the trail. Don’s heated visor stopped working and he decided to ride back to lodge blind rather than follow us. We made it through the valley and hit a couple cold spots, but nothing to bad until we crossed the Elliott a Olnes Pond and got to the Pipeline, where the temps dropped down to 20 below. A bit on the chilly side, the good news is that from there on we were heading uphill and into warmer temps and deeper snow.
The ride along the Pipeline to Old Murphy Dome Road was probable the best riding of the day, 20 inches of snow and smooth sailing. I think everyone really enjoyed riding along the Pipeline with the warmer temps and fresh snow that took out all the bumps we were getting way to use to.
Don’t they all look much more relaxed here.
We hit the Old Murphy Dome road and headed back to Elliott Hwy where we crossed the road and rode along the mine access road to the base of Murphy Dome and then on to Cleary Summit.
The ride to Cleary Summit and down Fairbanks Creek Road was sweet. Enough snow to play in and no rocks until we connected with the Historic Fairbanks Circle Trail that is.
This last part of the ride was no fun at all. It appears that some folks in their 4×4 trucks/jeeps decided to run the trail to Chatanika and tore it all up. I guess I would have minded, we all have to have or fun and recreation, but their rig’s kicked all the snow off the trail and in places we were skipping rocks to make it back, no fun and hard the sleds.
So to make a long story short, the ride was overall enjoyable and everyone had a good time.
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