Bob Woodward

Last weekend a lot of Bend mountain bike riders heeded the call of the Bent blog and headed to Peterson Ridge where they were greeted with some incredible mud-free riding. Except for a few short, and not that muddy, spots the trails were firm and fast.
The recent spate of muddy trails has yet again raised the question of when and when not to ride a trail that’s muddy and what riders can all do to make sure trails don’t get damaged too badly.
COTA trail maintenance and construction mavan Chris Kratsch weights in the subject below.
“The first thought most people have is ‘Mud in Central Oregon.’ While it true we live in a desert and for most of the year our trails are bone dry and if we do receive rain in the summertime it only improves trail conditions.  However, in the winter and spring that situation is different, as our soils become saturated and frozen. Along comes a warm front or the spring thaw and we’re all psyched to head out to ride our bikes or go for a run. The trouble is as the top layers of trail start to thaw out it becomes muddy as there is nowhere for the water to go but to the surface. While other parts of our state laugh at what we call mud, the fact is the same issues arise on both sides of the Cascades. For some trails mud riding is acceptable for others it is not because of their sensitivity to lasting damage.

After the past week of mild weather, avid mountain bike riders are probably of a mind that the trails at the Maston, for example, are dry and mud-free. Think again. The Maston trails are still extremely muddy in sections from the daily freeze/thaw cycles that are drawing up all the moisture from deep in the ground and depositing it on the surface.
So the riding at Maston isn’t ideal, and worse, the number of ruts being carved into the muddy sections of trail are going to take a long time to smooth out once the weather either gets colder and a freeze occurs, or when the trails finally dry out come spring.
A suggestion is to give riding the Maston trails a rest for at least a week, or if in the area, go to the north trailhead and ride east on the “red road” and south when you come to the gray cinder road for a nice, and not muddy, out-and-back trip.

In my three-and-a-half decades here I don’t recall a warmer January. Of course, I may be entirely wrong, but I remember a lot of Januaries when the month started with a prolonged cold spell. That’s cold spell as in minus 20 and even minus 30.
February used to be the month when temperatures would head into the mid fifties and people would start talking about an “early spring.” Two weeks later they would be shoveling snow.
One February we experience the biggest low-pressure gradient and a cold spell that lasted for a week with temps diving into the minus 20 range.