I ride McCormick Ridge road a few times a year. It's a very challenging climb, lots of steep sections on what seems like a never ending hill. However, after today's ride it will seem a whole lot easier.
I was happy when I got up this morning and the roads had begun to dry from all the rain we'd had.
However, shortly thereafter high winds picked up and that was a bummer, it's never fun riding in high wind.
Scott and Jen showed up for the ride, no Doug (wimp). The three of us plus Carol started out together. Carol turned back part way thinking she was not in good enough shape to do this ride.
When the three of us completed the initial climb up McCormick Ridge we could see we'd have snow the rest of the way. Scott said he wanted an adventure. Long time ago Jen told me she married Scott because she wanted adventure. I enjoy adventure (at least this was not another Lapwai Loop). So we kept going. Eventually the snow got rather deep from snow drifting onto the road. Jen was slowly dropping Scott and I until her rear wheel spun out and she had to get off and push for awhile. Scott took charge then, he had the fattest tires of all of us. Jen and I had started with relatively narrow tires, fat tires were better for the snow.
We were happy when we finally got to the top. It's been a long tough climb what with the snow slowing us down and all. I was a bit worried about our descent down, I was afraid it might be a bit dangerous. In the end it was not that bad. The road we descended on did not get the snow drifts that McCormick had. Instead we had several sections of 5-6 inch deep of fluffy snow. This was plenty fun to ride in. If you had one pedal all the way down your foot would drag through the snow. Snow was building up on our rims and then when we go fast enough the snow would fly off our rims and hit us in the face, or hit the person behind us in the face. This is called fun, you see. We were all fairly cold, Jen particularly. Her body has not matured enough to have a layer of fat to help protect on on these colder windy rides.
Luckily we were out long enough so that when it was time to turn into the wind it had died down significantly. Jen had gotten pretty uncomfortably cold so we called Carol for rescue. She brought the dogs with her and so Scott and I rode with the dogs for awhile. They kicked our butts.
When we got back home, Carol had nice warm banana/apple bread for us.
