Crust-biking in SE Wisconsin - we don't need no stinkin trails.

[trailville]

I've had a lot of fun crust-skiing over the years but it's extremely rare to get crust strong enough to support a bike in my neck of the woods.

Well, we've had a strange March in SE Wisconsin and the combination of heavy snows intermixed with rain and multiple thaw-freeze cycles and the very cold nights we've had this week provided a unique opportunity to try some off-trail crust-biking this morning. This is a North-facing slope into a river ravine and still had a thick crusty snow-pac about 6-8 inches deep. My tires did sink maybe a half-inch to an inch into the looser crust on top, but other than that I was riding on top of the snow. Not flying like crust-skiing, but fun in its own way.

I'll admit it doesn't look too exciting in the video, but that ravine is steeper than it looks and it was quite fun (getting back to the top . . . not so much). I just rode along the trail on the ridgeline looking for a good clean line down into the ravine and went for it.

The video is really short (make sure you select at least 480p to view it)



And don't even think of scolding me for riding off trail, riding on top of the crust meant my tires never touched the ground and my choice of lines meant no vegetation was hurt in this video. This is true "no impact" mountain biking.

[heyyall]

Nice video--"no impact", that made me laugh

Our crust melted today (Rochester, MN) Perhaps it is a sign spring will finally be appearing to a trail near me.

[trailville]

Searched Youtube and found some more crust-biking vids.
These folks have some serious crust going on. I suspect they're located a bit further north or some much higher elevations.