Don't Worry, We Found Winter, It's Still Here

• Posted on 2 November 2022

This whole thing started on a Friday. We’ve had some teaser snow this season, a few decent little storms that allowed us to get out and ride our favorite trails, transformed into white ribbons darting in and out of the trees, but nothing that really stuck long enough to satiate our desire to get the fat tires out and really feel like we had a go at full winter of fat biking. Having a bit of anxiety about that, I looked at the forecast for the coming week and moved the dot on the map north. Cuyuna was the natural choice, I’d been watching and living out what looked like a pretty rad winter, in contrast, from up that way via social media all season. I thought about it, weighed the options, and kept moving the map further north. I’ve had an affinity for the North Shore ever since I made my first trip up there with my family years ago, and having a love of that rugged coastline in the back of my mind, hit Duluth, which would have been another grade A option for this idea, and still kept moving further north. I settled on Tettagouche State Park. I’d been planning gravel rides and overnight camping trips up around that area for a while, but I’d never thought about taking it on over the winter. My mind was already made up, but looking at the forecast for the following Tuesday made me just about lose it. 8-16 inches of snow forecast over a 24 hour period. This was going to be perfect. This also gave us a chance to try out something new, the 8 miles of groomed fat bike specific trails in Split Rock State Park. This only amplified our excitement, and was our plan for wednesday morning after we rode back out of camp.