Nederland...it's fucking windy here

That's me and Heyride heading into the gale force winds. 18 degrees down at the lot, 5 degrees at 10,200ft with 40mph gusts.  I thought the Chinook winds were supposed to bring WARMER weather...?

Heyride skinning up at 12:30 this afternoon, yeah, low light this time of year...!

Lil cornice break from my SINGLE ski kick.  Lots of windslab everywhere today. Not the best conditions up here, but in the woods there were some dreamy spots.

Heyride heads down into the best 7 turns of the day. When it's windy, stay in the trees!

Today we headed up to the tunnel spot to see how the snow cover is. It's...good in places...bad in others. But much more snow up there than I thought there'd be! Why is that? Sympathetic snow, which means we get lots of wind.  Blow-over from Winter Park...sorry you Park peeps! We steal your snow.  The divide is scoured, you just have to find the pockets of catch snow...and you'll always have a powder day here.  It's harder on the fingers, toes, and face (i.e., frost bite), and there's certainly more climbing here than some other spots...but it's worth it!  Winter has arrived.

New name, same ramblings/rants, new content coming

I changed my name, as "Meriwether Rants" hasn't been too descriptive of my blog for a long long time.  It's more my ramblings on bike, ski, or foot.  I plan to turn this into a companion site to Meriwether Cycles at wordpress to talk more about other things than bicycle fabrication, but also as an eventual showcase for other fabrications that I come up with.  I hope to sell Discos again for example, since I have probably 100 cassette spacer sets still sitting in my shop.  I also have the tools to make the Disco's myself so let me know if you're interested...

Ok, so here goes...!

Tahoe

5pm Friday night...

...and Saturday 7am.

A quick weekend visit to Norcal had me running around before the winter storm hit. It's crazy reading that 5 feet of snow is going to fall in the next 48 hours. It certainly dumps in Tahoe! When I got up this morning, there was 'only' 9.5 inches of new relatively light snow (for here) and 24 degrees, with a claimed 16" at the top of the nearest ski run. Damn...I wish I had my backcountry gear, but then i wouldn't have gotten any work done!

Surprise blizzard

3pm, total whiteout coming home from Ned yesterday. Cars all over the place, dumped a couple inches in a half hour's time. Wasn't that bad if it hadn't iced up a half-hour before that. Seemed like all northern Colorado passes closed down from this one surprise storm...nobody was prepared. (Said 40% chance of snow and less than a half inch expected...). Winter is here! Eldora opens Friday but I'll be in the land of sierra cement.

The Wild Mustang is kicking ass

Chloe, our semi-wild mustang (she's getting domesticated more and more every day - she even comes up to me for scritches now), is doing very well after some tentative times this last month fighting kidney failure. If you don't know the story, go to my girl's site and check it out, or at least the latest video. She is one happy mustang in her pasture, a true inspiration of fighting for every ounce of life.

My 1st fresh tracks of the season

The Hunter is a permanent singlespeed right now. I prefer one gear in snow or mud...or most anytime really. But for the winter it's really just perfect - no shifting issues, icing up, lighter bike to carry, etc.

I didn't get first tracks on Habid, but I did get first BIKE tracks. Some runner and his dog were all over that area yesterday morning! I really don't think there's a much better riding experience than singletrack with two inches of champagne powder on top. With snow, Habid returns to the pre-Y2K feel where you need to know the trail to stay on it. Reminded me of IGSSC99, except nobody was lighting CO2 cartridges on fire to keep their hands warm.

(Tech note: 2.4 Kenda Nevegal's make great snow tires. They're the track on the right up above. Running 20 lbs at the most as tubeless with Stans, wide big knobs, great traction on anything loose. But on pavement? Not so good.)