MCC Death March

The Mountainview Cycling Club is up and at it again. After the close to world domination last year. Ok, we were 6th overall but our team is half the size of the other. Well it was time to move us up a few spots and start training.

For the first outing we had great numbers, as long as no one else on the team reads this there will be more next time. We met at McCrae Lake parking lot. The plan was around a 3 hour snowshoe. Good plan.

McCrae is in my backyard so I became the tour guide. I think they may think about this more the next time. We headed out to the Crow's nest looking like the chain gang.

This is a pretty mellow trail section and very popular. At times there are almost stop lights needed. Kept a good pace going for an hour and a half before a quick refueling. Tip to Lee, dogs will swarm the person closest to the ground.

This is when the fun began. We left the main trail to hit the back country on route to the rapids. Directions were kept by "yep the lake is still on our left" We smashed through 2 plus feet of powder till we came to an important crossing. Aww let me be more specific.

Lake crossing!!!! There were two reasons for this spot. The first was to continue on this side of the shoreline there were two large bay's that we would have to go around and the second was that I knew there was a huge rock shelf were the water was only about a foot deep. There were also a few people ice fishing at the mid point.

This is a picture of the speed death march pace after I put my foot through the ice. Now to settle the nerves of everyone. I touched bottom, about 6 inches down. I was far from panicked but of course a few people got a little nervous. This was were the ice fishing people were great to say the ice is safe and showed everyone the big chunk that they pulled out that was 2 feet thick. I knew exactly where i was, now of course that makes me look a little bad the fact that I walked right where I knew the ice might be a little thin. Let's just say that I was happy to have my gor-tex shoes on.

We continued to push along back on the mainland to our final destination.

20 minutes far here we were back at the cars. The high light of the day was the two large pots of chili that Cindy made and were warming back at my place. Thanks to Cindy and Dale for the idea of the snowshoe and food day.

Stories were told by the fire and nerves were calmed with a beer and wine. Aww what a way to finish a workout.

It's round two tonight with the Monday Night Something crew. More on that tomorrow. Now it's back to the real world for 8 hours or so.