We are on a mini-vacation within our vacation staying in a remote part of northwestern Wisconsin, where the nearest traffic light is about 50 miles away, and even then, that’s the only traffic light within about 100 miles of here! Anyway, today’s ride involved shuttling out the two miles of unplowed road from our cabin to the main highway, parking and riding from there. No real way to ride the road bike on an unplowed road. Warmer temps today just above freezing, but still cold with a stiff south wind blowing. I rode through the snowmobile capital of northwestern Wisconsin, and saw maybe 75-100 snowmobiles and even had a chance to race one!
Seven and a half years ago today, Kristine and I got married in a beautiful little town called Shell Lake followed by our wedding reception about 45 minutes away even further north into the northwoods of rural Wisconsin at a retreat center called the Schwan Center. Today, I biked from Shell Lake 32 miles up through the snowy backroads and snowmobile trails arriving to meet Kristine, her parents, and our kids for a short mini-vacation at a cabin in the same conference center where we had our reception. Here’s a recap of today’s adventure mountain biking on snowy roads and trails in very rural parts of Wisconsin.
The basic story of the ride is that the roads got snowier and snowier as they became more rural. My Garmin worked great, but the route I had planned ahead of time didn’t upload correctly to the device so I had to stop every now and then at an intersection to figure out which way to go. I just generally had to head north though, so it was fairly easy to navigate by the setting sun. Some of the roads were really easy to ride on because the snow was hard packed, but other roads which saw a lot of snowmobile and car traffic had really loose snow that was hard to ride on. I think you can tell by the graphs below the location of the most difficult roads by the spots where my speed and heartrate are lowest.
Lastly, here is a video I took towards the end of the ride crossing the Namakogen River on State Hwy 77. If you easily get motion sickness, you may not want to watch!
Ride map
Ride data
Route map – aerial view – look at all the lakes!
Garmin speed data – note the lowest speeds on the second half of the ride
Garmin heartrate data – low sections corresponding to low speeds
Garmin temperature data – much warmer today than Sunday – still below freezing pretty much the entire ride!
Cycling Adventures with Brian Toone 