The end of winter is approaching....

As we cruise past the middle of April and arrive in Spring 2014 I thought it would be nice to complete a little round up of what we have been doing over the 2013/14 winter season, yes I realise its been a while since I wrote one of these.  Firstly I am still working at Paramount Cycles, they were kind enough to keep me on through the winter season which has been fun.

Winter arrived late in Anchorage, for the bikers this was fine, it just meant more biking on dirt however the skiers were not so lucky.  The first significant snowfall was not until the 11th November 2013 where we received around 6"

Measuring the snow

Following the first snowfall winter really kicks into gear, the groomers at Kincaid and hillside get to work setting up the skiing trails.  For us bikers we rely on traffic to set up our trails, traffic can be snowshoeing/skis or if we have permission snow machine.  It was nice to see how quickly the trails are transformed following significant snow.  This year the trails seemed to set up even faster than the previous year, after two days most of the trails seem to become perfect ribbons of singletrack winding between the trees and open meadows.

Speedway trail

This years winter was a funny one weatherwise for us here in Anchorage and the rest of Alaska.  After an initial cold spell early on in the season we have had many weeks of unseasonally warm weather which melted a lot of snow base that we had been accumulating.  For the skiers it has been frustrating and also for the bikers, studded tyres were almost essential if you wanted to continue riding, some people even resorted to road/cross bikes in January.

Winter did redeem it's self snow wise through March though with the weathermen predicting 3-4" of snow we received around 14", that snow fall has got us through mostly until now.  We are currently experiences temperatures in the 50's which is doing a good job of making it feel like spring.  Last week I was able to ride some crust in town, this is a unique type of riding where you are able to ride pretty much anywhere in the forest/swamps.
Here is a short video, although I am not in this one, a couple of my friends are.  It seems to give a real sense of where you can ride when the conditions are good :)

Crust riding the swamps

Crust riding in the forest

During the winter season, despite the warm weather I managed to ride around 1000miles and got to race some fun events with some really nice people.

Aside from me riding we also had some important things going on as a family.  Amanda was away on a course through part of November and December, what seemed like immediately on her return we were jetting off to the UK for Christmas and to see Grandma get remarried.   Christmas in the UK was a blast, we were able to catch up with a lot of people which is always fun and of course the main event over there.... no not Christmas but the wedding.

The Happy Couple

All dressed up

Finally we moved into our new condo.  Thankyou very much to Emily for helping with this, it would have been much, much, much more difficult without your help.

Finally

Thanks for reading everyone, I will get back into writing a bit more frequently now, well I will try to.

Until next time, 

Take care,

Nick