Snow MTB

A week ago I decided to try mountain biking on snow, specifically the ice-glazed snow of the PR. I've ridden a couple times on trails with enough traffic and melting that the ice was intermittent, but here was a new category. We had plentiful snow, followed by rain and warm days, followed by cold, leaving the trails with a smoothly undulating ice over enough snow to cover even the tips of the rocks. I don't have studded tires for my mountain bike, and the rubber slid easily on the ice. I crashed twice in the first 50m, but my pads and the impossibility of going fast made crashes nonthreatening. The crashes did not bode well - I hadn't even reached a slope yet. I was surprised that the trails seemed utterly unused - providing none of the icy texture I've had before. And the ice weakened off the center of the trail so that if my tire drifted (slid) there, it would often break through the crust and become stuck. I started thinking about heading home and switching to a road ride instead.
After that 50m there's a substantial descent, steep enough that E still has trouble climbing it sometimes. Before I got there I had decided to walk it, but even that was tricky with the smooth ice and the bike sliding around. I had to kick into the crust to make tiny steps. Boding worse.
By default I took the path E and I normally use, heading toward the jumps. But I found myself walking as much as riding, and even the riding parts felt out of control. At the first bridge, a short straight non-rickety one, someone had kicked off most of the ice, but the approach and far side were so slick that I could easily imagine failing to line up the three segments. I did ride it, but was sliding again on the far side. Soon after that, again walking a trivial climb, I gave up: I just don't have the right equipment for this and I'm going home. And I'd made a mistake - I had thought about using SlushBike's front wheel with its studded tire on the mountain bike, but I didn't remember to set this up before coming. So I began planning my next attempt as I backtracked.
A turn before the base of that substantial hill I was on a flat trail and was riding for a change. At the turn to go up the hill I had a flash that at this moment I was having fun, so maybe I should continue on this flat trail another 50m or so, then turn around and go home. The path began a slight incline, but it wasn't terrible, so I rode it and kept going. Then I shifted to riding until I got stopped, then I'd turn around. But I was on a perimeter, easy trail here, and by the time I did get stopped I'd forgotten about turning around. I wound up walking the bridges, but riding most of everything else.
When I reached the "cliff" above Route3, I decided to take a snack break. (This is the eastern edge of the PR, and I'd started on the western edge then heading north.) While watching the cars go by I thought more about how I was breaking through the ice and decided to let some air out of the tires. Before this I had discovered that unlocking the suspension helped, and later I found that standing off the saddle helped - my technique evolved to trying to float over the crust, and this also maximized my steering grip. And I hadn't realized it while riding, but I'd been riding some much tougher hills than I could at the start of this ride. I was improving!
I continued south then west. There's a flat singletrack with rather dense forest on either side heading east, and those trees lifted my spirits and I found myself going fast. Why not see how fast I could go? After riding in the lowest gear almost all day, I shifted past 2 into 3 and I think 4, and it all held together. Here's where I really felt the difference in standing out of the saddle, and the softened fork actually started doing the work of absorbing bumps. (In this case, this cushioning was spent making my passage gentle enough to avoid cracking the ice or bumping my balance, forcing a tiny lateral or other force which could make the bike start sliding.) In this mode I completed that part of the path and connected with a fire road (a boring trail). Before I reached the fire road, though, it occurred to me that I had missed visiting one of E's favorite areas, which we call "mosquito land". (This is roughly due west of the biggest log ride in the PR, out to around the middle of the PR west-east.) So, after reaching the fire road and turning around, I headed there.
Mosquito land is a swampy area featuring some of the worst bridges in the PR. I'd forgotten about a short steep descent to enter it, and I couldn't even clearly see the trail so once more I was walking. Then a short ride but with enough turns and undulations that I lost that feeling of confidence I'd put together above. Then I faced a bridge, this one rather long, primarily a ladder shape made of inadequate lumber, with the near half submerged in the swampy water. To patch that situation, there was a 2x8 informally bridging the near shore with the middle of the bridge. To frost the cake, a fallen tree lay nearly along the right edge of the bridge. Unlike the frozen pond areas I'd ridden over, this area was wet and black. I stood studying the obstacle, decided to ride it and tried to clear my mind of distractions. Fully focussed, I mounted the bike, rode the icy land to the bridge, and started along the plank. I soon dropped onto the slightly-submerged ladder part, but that was ok. What I didn't count on was the ladder part then shifting and canting under my weight. I naturally steered to adjust, but by then I was on the dry side where the tree lay along the edge, and when my front wheel touched it I lost steering control and then balance and tipped out over the tree. This was all low-speed and I had my foot out to land on, but I couldn't quite reach the grassy bump I aimed for, and instead I sank to the middle of my shin in the water.
On the far side I took off all the wet stuff and wrung it out or smacked it as best I could, making a big mess of brown on the clean white crust. Then I thought of Shifu from E's current favorite movie at the moment, and what he said to his student, the Kung Fu Panda: 'when you concentrate, you suck.'
My wool socks were impressively warm, and in fact I never got cold at all. But I did head back home after that, boot squishing the whole way. I tried to get to the car quickly, largely because a month or two ago, when E fell into the ice at Mine Falls, getting cold was a big worry so we sprinted the mile to the car as fast as possible. Riding fast would have been a good idea anyway, to really nail down the technique I'd been building. In fact, I only half realized what I'd done when I rode the bottom half of the substantial hill near the car.
In the end, it was a great ride and I've ordered a rear studded tire for next time. I'll ride the road front wheel from SlushBike.
(If you're interested in the tires, I ordered one Nokian "Freddies Revenz Lite" tire, which is 2.3" wide with 336 studs. I picked this because it's their widest studded tire, and I really want width to help me float over the glazing. SlushBike runs Nokian "Hakkapeliitta W106", a 1.9" wide road tire with only 106 studs. Peter White has a good but stale article about these. They're made by Finns with a fun sense of humor I don't quite understand. I believe "Freddies Revenz" is a reference to Freddy Krueger. And my Hakkapeliittas came with tags on them featuring the smiling, disembodied head of a Ward Cleaver type with a thought bubble reading, "Hi, I'm your dad!".)