Such a Cold Ride

We went out on January 11th to see if we could find any of that fresh snow that had just fallen.  To say the least it was cold and stormy up there all day.  The cold really didn't bother me until the end of the day when we had to ride the trail home.  Anything that had gotten wet absolutely froze stiff.  For me that was my gloves.  They didn't get wet inside, but the outside was damp.  On the trail I started noticing that my fingers where getting a bit cold.  I turned on my snowmobiles hand warmers.  It helped a little, but not enough.  Soon my hands were stinging.  I eventually couldn't take it anymore.  I stopped on the trail and with frozen fingers I unzipped my tunnel bag (Painful) and got out my spare gloves.  Once I put them on I instantly felt warmer.  Soon my hand warmers felt like they where actually doing something and the rest of the ride to the car was pleasant.

Lessons learned on this trip -
1.  I have never needed to change my gloves before, and was seriously contemplating why I keep a spare set in my bag.  Now I know that it is indeed a necessary item.
2.  Extra goggles is a must.  My goggles did fine the entire day.  Until In the video you will see a part where I am climbing a steep hill (toward the end).  Before climbing this hill I took my helmet off, and the inside of my goggles fogged up instantly.  Usually in this situation I can just fan the goggles with my hand, or swing my helmet through the air to clear up the fog.  On this occasion the fogged lenses was compounded by the frigid cold air.  The fog condensed, and instantly froze.  Ice formed on my lens.  I climbed up the hill with very low visibility.  This is dangerous to say the least.
3.  Cary a GPS.  With the low visibility at the end of the trip we almost got lost.  Luckily one person in our group kept a good sense of where he was.  Thanks PinNwiggle!  We were on top of a ridge that we usually follow over and down to the trail.  because of the low visibility we ended up one ridge over from where we needed to be.  When we started following it down we ended up in unfamiliar territory.  Eventually PinNwiggle got us back on track.  Had he not of been there we could have been turned around for some time.

Ok, Ok, enough about that.  Here is a video I threw together of our ride.  Despite all the complaining you just read about above.  We had a great time. We had my friend with us who doesn't have a lot of time on a snowmobile so we spent some time giving him some instruction too.  It was fun to watch him apply what we said to do.  If anybody wants to ride in Northern Utah or Southern Idaho area go to www.DiscussPowerSports.com, sign up and PM or Email me.  We can arrange a trip and show you around.  



Thanks for reading,
DPS