I have a few general rules when it comes to winter riding. 1 – only ride outside if it’s in the mid twenties or warmer. 2 – avoid riding in snowstorms, stay out of the way of the plows.

Today I woke up and it was warm enough, but we’d received four inches of snow overnight and it was still coming down. However, after our plowguy came I went outside and could see other folks out walking and stuff and decided that it would be weak not to ride.

I took my Niner ONE9 out for it’s first ride beyond the driveway. Right now I’m running a 32:20 for the winter roads, a bit tougher than my new favorite gearing for trails, 32:22. This means that I’ve got my super cool Boone Ti cog on the back, my 22 tooth cog is the Endless (which is also super cool).

For the winter, I’m running the Continental Mountain King 2.4′s on front and rear. I like them in the snow, the knobs are very knobby and the rubber is a bit squishier. Not sure exactly what pressure I was running, initially I inflated both to about 24 psi. But after having some issues sticking to the road on the way up the first climb, I let some air out which helped immensely.

The roads were really snowy, even the paved roads were quite a mess. My starting temp was somewhere around 25 degrees, but as I climbed up to what I call ‘the shelf’ the wind started to pick up and the temps dropped a bit.

As long as I was climbing or pedaling, life was good. I had to dodge a few plows, but not much traffic on the back roads. Some of the descents were fairly white-knuckle, trying to keep both wheels rolling and not locking up. Like usual, it was the descending that took the wind out of my sails and brought on the bone chilling cold that made me turn back 15 minutes early.

Gear: helmet liner, poly-pro base layer, Oakley fleece jersey, big red Mammut softshell jacket, snowboarding gloves, Endura shorts, Pearl Izumi winter tights, Cloudveil softshell pants, Swiftwick wool socks, Lake winter shoes, chemical foot warmers.

Note – my feet did perfectly fine today. My hands were painfully frozen after the descent, but pedaling uphill back to the house brought the warm blood back. Two layers on the legs was a pretty good call, hot at some points but overall i was happy to have them.