Mud Season is Mud Season is Mud Season: that’s a fact of life for everyone who wants to get out on the trails. The slow progress of Spring is always just a little frustrating. By the first of April, most people–not me, I’m still holding onto winter–but most people are ready for warm weather and greenery.
With the snowbanks now melted back off the shoulders of the main roads, road bikers are suddenly out in force. Look around and you’ll see lots of them riding solo and in small groups. Road bike racing/training season has started, so you know there are colorful packs of cyclists out there somewhere on weekends.
But the group that caught my attention and got me thinking about spring was a pack of six mountain bikers who crossed the road in front of me yesterday morning as I was headed north looking for snow. If I’d had a bike on the roof rack instead of skis, I might have stopped and asked to join them.
They came out of a narrow paved road, crossed the highway, stopped briefly to regroup, then disappeared into another narrow paved road. A quick check of the DeLorme Atlas showed a whole network of interconnected back roads in that area with hills on one side of the highway and a river valley on the other. . . what a wonderful place to warm up for trail riding when mud season’s over!
For a number of reasons, fat tires, suspensions and back roads just seem go together at this time of year. First, of course, is that most biking trails are either still snowcovered or closed for mud season. Even maintained dirt roads can sometimes be too soft for biking at this time of year. That leaves rural back roads, preferably narrow and winding through fields and woods, as your best bet for fat tire riding fun.
Winter is rarely kind to the road surfaces, especially in New England. The repeated cycles of rain, freeze, and thaw break up the asphalt surface of many back roads. There are usually potholes and frost heaves around well into May. And even where there aren’t, the road margins are covered with sand and rocks left over from winter sanding, and chunks of broken tar from the frost heaves and potholes.
All of which make for uncomfortable and potentially even dangerous riding on the hard, narrow tires of most road bikes. But these obstacles don’t bother a fat tire bike at all. Why should it? Fat tires are designed to roll easily over the dirt, rocks and roots of woodland single tracks—a little rough pavement isn’t going to stop the fun.
And if the riding surfaces aren’t in the best shape at this time of year, neither are most riders. Even if you snowshoed, cross-country skied, or skated all winter, you probably aren’t hardened up in all the right places for a long go on a bike. That’s OK.
Like leaves in the spring, mountain bikers need some time to stretch out unfurl and get ready for the long days of summer. If you own a fat-tire bike, get out the map, find some interesting looking back roads and go for a ride. If you need challenge, go up and down some hills, but simply getting out and riding a bike in these early days of spring is usually challenge enough.