This is the time of year that every mountain biker dreads; the onset of the cold, wet Pacific Northwest winter. There are always rainy days, but in the late spring and summer, usually the rainy days are followed by dry days that allow the trails to dry out. Winter means rainy days followed by more rainy days, maybe a little snow. The trails get wet, turn to mud and puddles and stay that way until spring. You can ride when the trails are wet, but it causes a lot of damage to the trails, so real mountain bikers don’t ride on the trails when they are muddy and wet.
Anyway, knowing that winter was literally a couple days away, we managed to get out for one more ride on dry trails before the wet weather sets in. There were a few autumn leaves still on the trees, they will be on the ground with the first winter storm.
It was a nice, sunny day, but cool and breezy with clouds beginning to blow over the western Cascade foothills. The sun was low in the early afternoon sky with long shadows on the forest trails.
2013 has been a great year for mountain biking; a mild winter and relatively dry and warm spring followed by a beautiful summer without much rain and not too many really hot days. One major forest fire in the area closed the higher elevation rides in the Mt. Hood National Forest for a week or so, but all in all, it’s been a great year. That’s all over now, it’s been rainy, windy and cold for the past couple days, it’s going to be that way for a while.