Finally!  Salida finally got a meaningful dump of snow this winter.  

Snow conditions in the high country have been slightly below average so far this year. The skiing has been decent.  But down here at 7,000 feet it’s felt like perpetual fall, with sunny days and little snow to speak of.  This is bad for a lot of reasons.  Snow is the main source of water for animals and plants in the area.  Snow recharges the aquifers that feed the wells that many of us depend on for water.  And without snow the whole place dries out into a tinder box just waiting for a summer lightning strike to turn us into a giant campfire.  

From an outdoor recreation standpoint, it’s been genuinely weird.  I’ve been riding my regular mountain bike on dry trails through the holidays while my go-to snow ride, my fat bike, has been sitting in the garage collecting dust since I put it away at the end of last winter.  I was beginning to wonder when I’d get to ride in snow again. 

Then a couple days ago the clouds rolled in and it started dumping.  We were supposed to get one to two inches overnight but we woke up yesterday to six inches of fresh on the ground. Time to dust off the fat bike! 

I was up and out reasonably early in the hope of getting untracked virgin snow.  As it turns out, the snow was of the very dry, very slippery variety and my ride up to the Little Rainbow ended up being more of a hike.  Like trying to get traction in six inches of talcum powder.

Once on the more rolling terrain of the Little Rainbow though, things got more entertaining.

Despite my early start, someone did beat me to a short section of the trail as indicated by a single set of snowshoe tracks.

But for the most part, I had the miles of untracked powder to myself. 

 

About halfway around my loop I came across another set of fat bike tracks.  I followed them for a couple of miles hoping to meet my fellow fat bike enthusiast.  But whoever it was must’ve been a ways ahead of me (and probably not stopping to take pictures) because I never did see them.

It’s tough to beat the views from Methodist Mountain in winter.

End of the trail. It’s great to see Salida covered in snow again!