There are several things that I have never planned to do...and ride Iron Mountain by myself is one of them. The trails are not very friendly, they're fairly remote and this time of year, it's really f'in cold up there. However, that is the exact situation I found myself in today. I had planned to ride the Beartree area of Iron with by friend Casey, but he called and bailed after I had already driven up to the parking lot and had gotten ready. So, I figured, I'm already here, dressed and wanting to ride, so what the heck, I'll ride solo. I figured that I could turn around anytime I felt like it since I didn't have anyone else to please on the ride. So off I went, pedaling up the Beartree trail.

I took my camera with me so I could take some pictures and shortly after I took the first picture I noticed that my batteries were just about dead. I got to take two whole pictures! My plan was to ride easy and stop to smell the roses..so to speak. Yeah it was cold, wet, muddy and I was alone, but the scenery up there was amazing! When I got to the top of Iron I noticed that all the trees had about an eighth inch of ice on them. It looked really cool on the pine trees, each green needle outlined on one side with a bright white stroke of ice and EVERY tree looked like that up there. I don't know if there is a mountain biker Heaven, but the trail leading to it would look exactly like that. It was euphoric.