Cascajun

I spent a few hours after work with the boys mountain biking on Galbraith.

I got out for a run and mountain bike ride on a beautiful spring day in Bellingham.

A run over Sehome Hill; over South Hill via Taylor; and down the South Bay Trail.

A mountain bike loop through town, including some of my favorite trials on Galbraith.

A closer look at my attempt to clear the snow covered log on a trail called Mullet.

That’s pure fun!

I’ve been going on some snow rides with my buddies the past few weekends. We’ve had some video camera’s along and captured some footage. Here is my first attempt at editing a short video with iMovie on my MacBook.

This also happens to be the first thing I’ve uploaded to YouTube. Obviously I’m a novice, as I can’t seem to set a still for my nice new video. Fortunately YouTube has set a default image, making that patently obvious to everyone. Nevertheless, I can now check off two more of those “must do before you die” pop-culture geek things!

Update: I see the still image I selected for the video is there now…nice.

I went for a nice, long run around Bellingham’s south side followed by a fairly strenuous mountain bike ride on Galbraith Mountain.

I wasn’t on fire like yesterday, but it was a great ride anyway.

I went out for a solo ride yesterday morning and had a personal best. I rode my favorite short ride in under an hour.

I had a great ride today on Galbraith Mountain with some friends I know through The Hub Community Bike Cooperative.

I spent Saturday morning on Galbraith Mountain. The weather and trail conditions were fantastic.

We had our first significant snow of the season in Bellingham on Friday night. Approximately 6-inches accumulated on the top of Galbraith Mountain. My friend Todd and I decided to grab our mountain bikes and go for a snow ride.

The ride up was tough and we soon had to shed our outer layers. Fortunately a couple of vehicles had been up the road ahead of us, breaking track. Even with good ruts to ride in, I was forced to walk about half the time. My single speed isn’t geared very well for climbing in the snow. The temperature was in the low 30’s with little to no breeze. We weren’t the only riders out, either. The two of us encountered at least 8 other riders before we left around 1pm.

We reached the top and parked our bikes. No need to lean them up or lay them down. They stuck quite well in the fluffy powder. That’s right, powder. This was some unusually dry snow for the PNW. It was quite apparent that we wouldn’t be going down across any clear cuts. The snow was just too deep for that. Our route down would have to be back down the road we had come up, or under the trees where accumulations were less than 4-inches.

The overcast conditions masked most of the views, but we still had a few glimpses of Lake Whatcom, Bellingham, and even a sliver of Mt. Baker. It’s pretty unusual to get this much snow in Bellingham before January. The Mt. Baker Ski Area reported their best Thanksgiving weekend in years with 24-inches of fresh snow falling in as many hours on top of a 100+ inch base.

Todd’s dog Nellie made two friends. They all frolicked and tussled in the snow while Todd and I plotted a route back down the mountain. The two other dogs were up with a WHIMPs trail crew and a film crew from the Bones Over Metal project. After a short break we headed down a trail known as Evolution and then on to Three Pigs. Riding downhill on single track in fresh snow is really fun and very challenging. I had some nice spills, usually when I rolled onto some off camber and uneven surface conditions hidden under the snow. Todd had a spectacular spill that landed him on his back in a small stream with his bike and legs in a tangled jumble. No injuries, but now he was soaking wet. It was time to get back to the truck.