Blizzard-biking..?

I think I have invented a new form of mountain biking, maybe a whole new sport. I am naming it Blizzard-Biking! You wheelspin up snowy icy lanes, then carry your bike through 4 foot snow drifts on the flat....and do the same on the downhill sections. Occasionally you find a gulley in the snow, like a bobsleigh run, where you can sit on the bike, kick off from the snow banks and freewheel into the next snow drift, head-on! Equipment: Helmet, winter gloves, sealskinz, winter boots. Bike (optional...). Maybe I should buy a sledge...



Photo 1: Motorway descent snowbanks; Photo 2: Lantern Pike night riding with snow banks; Photo 3: Oaken Clough to Broad Clough aka "peat bog descent" below Kinder Low End; Photo 4: Kinder Reservoir almost completely frozen

New Year's Eve ride

We battled through the road closures to attempt a 9am start from the Woodbine Café in Hope. The coal fire crackled as we waited for all to arrive, comforted by a huge bacon barm and a coffee. We plotted a route suitable for the snowy conditions and suitable for Jim, a relative novice. However, the route we had planned from Win Hill along the Roman Road was under 4 feet of snow, leaving the infamous "Beast" as the only passable descent. The Beast is a notorious technical descent with large boulders and loose rocks. After a bit of tuition and a demo from Curtis and I, Jim and Mark valiantly attempted it. Sensibly however, they kept certain sections to savour at a later date!

We then balanced and slid along side the reservoir roads to the reservoir footbridge, and then delicately back to Hope along the sheet ice of the small lanes around Aston. Arriving back at the Woodbine café in the snow capped Hope Valley, it seemed a beautiful way to bid farewell to 2009, looking forward to more of the same in 2010.