Fresh snow on bike

If you're riding your bike through heavy snow, the worst place to try to keep the front wheel straight is following the track of a car or truck. As far as I can tell, the car is moving fast enough that it doesn't pack the fresh snow very tightly. So what you have is a layer of packed snow - a quarter to half inch crust - above an inch or so of softness. When you try to track your way along this path with your 32 mm wide bike tire, it's going to bite right through that crust and sink and swerve in the soft stuff. You will want to hold the wheel straight. You will believe that holding the wheel straight is what must happen. But you will lack the friction assistance you need to do this, because it will, momentarily, be as if your front wheel is free to turn, as though it was up in the air. But it's not. The final treachery will be that beneath that soft stuff, there will almost certainly be a thin layer of ice or hard-packed snow on the pavement. There will be little that you can do about this, short of using studded tires (which I don't, and I will explain why later*). All of which means, despite your best efforts to keep the front wheel straight and in line with the rear wheel, you will fail, and you will fishtail and swerve, and you will fight to keep yourself upright.

Today I succeeded in staying upright all the way in, but it was one of those rides during which the heaviness and treachery of the fresh and drifted snow allow you to hardly notice that you're riding into a northwest wind. I try to do this without dropping into the lowest gear, because if you do that, you know you're in a kind of extreme state. If the conditions get more difficult, there's no way that the machine will be able to help you make it easier. I did manage to keep it out of the low gear on this ride, but just. Completing a ride like this by keeping upright the whole way, both ways, not even touching a foot down, guarantees that the day will be a good one. And it was.

The ride in:           Temp -11'C Wind 25 ks NNE
The ride home:     Temp -12'C Wind 25 ks NNW

* I have used studded tires when I road all year in Winnipeg. It made some sense then, because there was much more likelihood of iced roads. Out here in the sticks there isn't any salt on the roads and there also isn't the same kind of freezing and thawing that you get on city streets. So studded tires are really only helpful on two or three days a year, and on the other days they're just expensive tires that are wearing out fast, and slowing you down (because there's a lot more friction). So out here I just commit myself to the occasional spill, which will be acceptable because I won't be in traffic, and falls in winter are actually slow, nearly graceful, affairs!