Winter 2023

This winter has been one filled with many adventures, none of them being epic and particularly lengthy on its own, as far as I’m concerned, however I put an emphasis on seeking out more adventure and bigger adventures in each one. It was a winter of micro adventures is how I would put it. And since it’s been a while since I wrote I thought I should document the small ones as one lump sum and share a little from each one. 

I always consider the start of bike winter with Global Fatbike Day. So this year GFD for me was a 60 mile solo ride around the southern portion of the Nicolet National Forest. The ice was still thin and the snow was basically non existent on this very cold early December day.

I explored a couple lakes I had never been to, climbed the Mountain fire tower, and rode the chunky gravel of humble hill. A super fun way to spend Global Fatbike Day!

One week later and what a difference that week of cold weather can do to ice production in early December! Chris Schotz’s Bushwhack invitational, a two day lake ride. Underdown for day 1 and Harrison Hills day 2. I look forward to this ride each year. Day one featured 26 lakes with about 24 riders taking part. Lesser known lakes and some favorites of the winter Underdown trail system are featured on this ride. 

Day two is always my favorite, though. We dive deep into the Harrison Hills area with lakes only accessible by bushwhack along with some that are on the “main” roads. When I say main roads I mean mostly two track and gravel forest roads, roads that rarely see a car this time of the year. 

39 lakes in total for Sunday with only five brave souls taking part. It was an amazing time with tons of hike-a-bike and plenty of exploring. This ride is becoming a classic.

With this ride and a couple other rides prior to this with lake crossings in them I had already crossed 68 lakes for the season and it’s only mid December!

The week after we had a big ice storm. Temperatures plummeted during the night causing the branches to hold onto the ice. With limbs hanging low, covered in ice, it made for beautiful scenery. However, the trees could not support the weight causing a lot of downed limbs. I took a 65 mile ride the following weekend to the Willow Flowage and was just north of the ice line to where only snow fell. Beautiful early season snow blanketed the area.

Then Christmas week I did another variation of the Global Fatbike Day ride, this time being 75 miles and finishing in the dark. There were a lot of trees still down from the ice storm in this area. The snowmobile clubs were putting in endless hours cleaning up the downed branches with hopes of opening up their trails. It made for tough riding as some roads had not yet been plowed this year. The finish at the end in the dark was a great memory. Riding areas in the snowy dark puts a fun vibe on even familiar paths.

Going into the new year the rivers and lakes started getting a sufficient layer of ice and I had been putting in a lot of miles running up the river. On the ninth I put together a 24 lake, 62 mile adventure ride starting from Jack Lake. Having never ridden across most of the lakes in this area I had a fun time designing the route and was anxious to ride it. As with any route in areas you have not ridden you run into surprises. I had one section after Snag Lake of what seemed an endless hike-a-bike. In this section I did pass an untouched remote lake or two, a fun reward for all the hard work of pushing a bike through deep snow. I tried hard to stitch this route together by connecting lakes with bushwhacking between each. This just added to the fun and provided a surprise around each corner. One memorable section was following an open creek through a bog with thoughts in my head of how few people had crossed this piece of land. I mean, why would they? It’s wetland in the summer so basically the only time is the winter. This in itself is the essence as to why I love winter adventuring.

Some rainy weather the following week allowed for singletrack trails to set up nicely when overnight lows dipped below freezing. This opened up the chance to do an Underdown/Prairie Dells yo-yo. The downtime with that bad weather also allowed my legs to recover nicely making this the perfect time to ride my modified version of the Frosty Bear route. It was a little over 100 miles and I called it Frosty Bear Triple XL. I started in Townsend following some familiar gravel roads turned to snowmobile trails. 

I put in a few roads that I had never been on and hit a few lakes to ride on. This actually put me over 100 different lakes that I had ridden across this winter. It was a stat that I took pride in. 

Stopped midway in Laona for questionable gas station burritos. A few unplowed sections outside of Laona kept the ride interesting and the technical part of it kept my body warm.

Another gravel ride finishing in the dark gave it the feeling of not ever being down those roads before. I was starting to like these late start rides that finish in the dark.

The weeks following that ride were packed with numerous trips to Underdown to ride singletrack on rides that I coined as the Underdown Adventure Club. Mostly it was just Chris and I on these rides. Chris and Candy had brushed out some new trails with the lengthening of the run along the Prairie River all the way to Hay Meadow and added the Flat Line deep in the Underdown, which added a couple pond crossings along with bog adventures. 

As temperatures started to melt away the snow on the gravel in the Wausau area I started venturing out on it. At one point the snowmobile trails closed for a short time. This was a good opportunity to connect gravel roads to snowmobile trails. I created a route to connect the Ackley Forest to the AT-AT Walker loop which added a huge amount of adventure to a run-of-the-mill gravel route.

The next week I used this opportunity to ride the Jack Lake area snowmobile trails after riding their singletrack. Doing rides like this easily creates fun 40+ mile days. It’s stuff you don’t normally get to ride and if you do ride it in the summer it’s a much slower pace through tall grass as opposed to the smooth and zippy groomed trails.

At this point we were getting towards the end of February and things started looking like we might have the start of gravel season but Mother Nature had other plans and slammed us with a few storms in a row. 

Mid March I went to Three Lakes to ride some 70 miles of  forest roads in the northern Nicolet National Forest. I really love this area of the Nicolet for the roads around Hidden Lakes singletrack. However, this was the first time that I’ve ridden that area in the winter. It turned out to be a beautiful and unique perspective of the area. The snow was extremely deep and the roads were in great condition.

The morning was very cold, maybe hitting -20 in some areas of the forest, causing any moisture in the air to crystallize and cover the ground making everything shimmery.

Unfortunately the lakes had too much snow on them so I was not able to ride them. It might be a route I’ll have to create for early next winter. 

The end of March, which I consider also the end of winter, I had a couple adventure rides I wanted to complete. First I wanted to properly connect the snowmobile trails in the Ackley Wildelife Area to the gravel roads to the south. And second, I wanted to connect the Underdown to Harrison Hills via snowmobile trails. Since the snowmobile trails need to be closed to do this I had to do it during that time of the year. Also it  has to be done when it’s cold so the trail surface is firm enough. So on a Monday I tackled the Ackley. I really like the Ackley because of the expansiveness of the low and swampy nature of it. The trails still had a ridiculous amount of snow for this time of the year. The creeks and ponds were still a bit froze over so not many migratory birds were present. Once those opened up the area would be full of so many species. It’s a really nice place to go once that happens.

They were fast rolling early on but as the hours ticked away the sun took its toll on it. Soon I got on gravel and made my way back to the west side to reconnect to snowmobile trails to bring me back to the start. 

The next two days were spent at Underdown and Harrison. The first day I rode Prairie Dells singletrack for what would be my last singletrack snow ride of the year. Once it started warming, to avoid damaging the delicate singletrack,  I made my way to the snowmobile trails. I rode those north to Copper Lake Road and then headed over to Horn Lake Road to make my way back to the parking lot. One last lake ride before hitting Horn Lake Road. 

The ice would not last many more days in the high sun angle typical of late March. 

After leaving the ice I went back to Horn Lake Road only to find that the majority of the way back to the parking lot was unplowed. After pushing my bike through snow, which was almost knee deep, I checked Google maps to see how far it was. Three miles. And it was a looong three miles! But, hey, it builds character, right? So I will say that it was a good last day of riding underdown winter trails for the year.

The next day was back up to that area to ride from Copper Lake Road to Harrison on the snowmobile trails. After the long ride up the asphalt of Grundy Road I was onto the snowmobile trails. They were so fun. I mean really, really fun! Rolling hills and banked corners from the snowmobiles made it a roller coaster of fun! It’s hard to put into words how fun and flowy the trails were. 

There were endless intersections to take but I only had a limited amount of time to ride. I could’ve ridden those trails forever. I made it a 30 mile loop. The longer the day went, the softer the trails became. As I got towards the southeast of Harrison Hills the terrain flattened somewhat, twisting around random small lakes.

 It was an amazing end to the snow season. 

With about 2,000 miles logged this winter season it was one to remember. I am really excited to take what I learned from new areas that I rode this year and build some more amazing routes for next winter!