The week-end before, Verča was ill so I ventured out Saturday (Jan24) on my own again.
I drove about 30 minutes outside of the city to the SW edge of the Brdy area where we often go biking.
This SW edge borders the prospective US Radar site, and is quite picturesque.

But I didn’t take many pictures. You see; I’ve seen it before several times; and I was either struggling up snowy slippery climbs; or fighting through the slushy, slippery, snowy flats; or bombing down the snowy descents trying not to fall off the ridge.

This was the ride when I discovered ice.

it looked like dirt, but shiny!

It started out as a weird frozen slushy stuff, like if they made artificial snow and someone screwed up the design and the snowflakes ended up round and 5mm in diameter. It was a chore to pedal in, but I stuck it out cause I drove 30 minutes to ride my bike alone damn it! Then the ice came. I guess I just looked down all of a sudden and realized under a light frosting of snow it was sheets of ice as far as the eye could see. And I could see it pretty well since it was about 3cm from my eye cause I was laying on the ground.

What was I doing on the ground?
What a good question you pose.
I don’t really know. I’m pretty sure I was riding my bike down the trail a second ago.

Anyway it was below freezing from mid December through the first week of the year. Then it got up to almost 8°C for a few days and the snow that had accumulated got wet, then back below freezing and we have ice. Lots of it!

I lost track around the 5th or 6th time on the ice; but I did get enough practice in to avoid landing on my face after the first 2 times. I ended up Paris-Roubaixing a lot of the ride where I could find a bit of extra texture in frozen leaves or deeper snow. Late in the first half of the ride I was trying to make up time on an flatish asphalt section and hit the deck while top gear pedaling. It seems black ice and asphalt look pretty similar under the tree canopy on an overcast day and I was lucky to have lasted so long. And I actually got nice and wet on this one, since I slid for quite a while on the slowly melting ice sheet.

edge to edge ice

I did manage a couple pics when I turned back on a forest road and couldn’t even walk up the trail. It was rather pretty covered in ice. I ended up hiking and riding in the woods for a couple hundred meters, but then had nice snow covered ice which could be ridden on with low tire pressure (about 16psi) and a fair bit of prudence.

yeah, more ice

True to form I made it back as darkness settled and was thoroughly pleased to see that the car was where I had left it (with our new Thule roof rack still attached.)

so 22.5km & 3 hours on single, double track, dirt, gravel & paved forest road;
all with either ice or snow or some horrific combination of both
with overcast skies with slivers of blue, avg. temp of 0.6 °C, & highs of almost 4°C