Most mountain bikers understand that riding trails during wet and muddy conditions is considered poor trail etiquette. It causes rutting, accelerates erosion and other forms of trail degradation.  However, many of these same users don’t understand that trails are at even greater risk during the freeze-thaw process.

What is the freeze-thaw process?

When soil freezes the moisture turns to ice crystals between the particles of the soil. In clay or loamy soil that’s tightly packed together, the moisture freezes and the crystals expand and rip the clay apart. As the soil thaws it becomes more porous and allows even more moisture in. This is repeated with every successive freeze-thaw cycle. In our region we can experience as many as 100 freeze-thaw cycles in a season.

When to ride?

Just because you “can” ride, doesn’t mean that you “should.” Sometimes, if you really love riding, you should stay off the trail and seek other ways to make the new season the best it can be. During the winter season it can be difficult to find good trail conditions. Oftentimes, the trails are frozen solid, but it’s too cold to ride. Other times, the weather is beautiful, but then the trails are too muddy or soft to ride. The best time to ride is when the trail is frozen solid. On days when the temperature dipped below freezing overnight, the worst thing you can do is wait for the sun to come out and warm up.  As the trail thaws it becomes very soft and muddy even if it hasn’t rained in several days. Even if the temperature stays below freezing, south facing trails can thaw in sunlight and turn into a peanut butter like texture.

If you’re leaving ruts in the single-track trail, please exit the single-track immediately. The ruts will allow more water to remain on the trail and make the conditions worse. It only takes a few careless people a short amount of time to destroy the trail in these conditions. In short, ride early and hope the sun doesn’t shine! It all comes down to this: frozen is good, hardpack is good … but mud is bad.

Please be patient. Lots of time and money have been invested to create high quality sustainable trails for you. Our trails are a precious resource. A little bit of respect and forethought now will help assure great trail conditions when the time is right.

For more information visit: http://www.imba.com/resources/research/trail-science/natural-resource-impacts-mountain-biking