As I was saying, a week makes a big difference. A week earlier I was bundled up within an inch of my life on an exploratory ride. This week was so warm that I had to remove the woolie layer after the first 30 minutes of mostly downhill riding.

Lucky for me, some friends and I had a tag team play date on Sunday. This enabled me not only to sweep and mop my floors while the boys played, but then to also get a fantastic 2.5 hour ride that afternoon. I was in the mood for some more exploring, so I headed up to Sterling Valley in Stowe and hopped on the VAST trail and headed Northeast, a direction I had never done before. Between the snowmobile trail, the Catamount trail and some other extensions, there’s plenty of snow bike riding. There was also plenty of snow, some of it fresh, so that the riding was quite good and not icy at all like the Waterbury trails the prior week.

Then, I headed up the Sterling Gorge loop to see how it was. It was, um, interesting. What started out as a wide, tracked out, buff highway became a narrow, poorly packed path. It was fairly steep and tough going, even hike-a-biking. I kept pushing up that hill, looking forward to when it turned to downhill so I could ride again but when I got there the way down was so utterly poorly tracked that I had to go back down the way I came. This route could really use a girl scout troop on snowshoes to pack it down. Pack a snack and let me know when it’s good to go.

"stop fiddling with your gear and lets go!"

It’s really quite awesome to be cruising along the trail, the dog running alongside. Quiet and smooth and soft. There was no one out yesterday. I only saw three skiers and two snowmobiles in a solid afternoon of riding. The skiing wasn’t great, but conditions were perfect for fat bikes.