Trail, road, and path report

I gotta raise that saddle.

Bill and I rode a few dirt roads of the Palouse on Sunday and found the roads to be in that mythical, once-a-year state of firm perfectness. There's just enough moisture in the road to feel confident when leaning into turns, but not enough wet cause your wheels to sink or slide. Plus, the snow/ice melt has smoothed out the washboards.

Nice stuff. So nice, that I didn't take the time to grab a photo for proof. If it doesn't snow or rain this week, we should see similar conditions next week.

Thorpe Road: that's smooth and lovely riding there.

As for HD trails: they're fine on top. I didn't go into south maze, but judging by the looks of the cyclists I saw coming out of there, who were clean and tidy, I'm thinking the trails are all mostly good. Certainly, there's no harm of big damage. Party on. For now.

The Fish Lake Trail from Fish Lake trail head, through the rubble, to Scribner and to Thorpe is all ridable. There are a handful of typical sections where you need to pick your way through some residual ice and snow, but it's just a patchy 1/2 mile section or so.

FLT at Thrope.
Here's a pic from the same spot a month ago. And here's one from 1.5 months ago. And here's one, taken across the road from this spot about 5 years ago when the trail was more to my liking.

I ran into Cyclocross-SS-Elephant-riding Jeff on the HD trails and he mentioned that Riverside State Park was pretty much clear outside of the shadow cast by the giant rock cliff/wall. All the trails by the river are in good shape. So there's that.

All-in-all, it's feeling like early spring. That's no guarantee against more snow of course.