With all due respect to AccuWeather.com and its “Reel Feel” conditions, we just finished a day of riding in Idaho’s Franklin Basin and we are using our own Real People barometer to tell you how the conditions are.
You might want to load up the sleds and head to southeast Idaho because the riding is going to awesome this weekend in that area. We know because we experienced it today.
We tagged along with Shawn Atkinson and his son Skyler for the day. We unloaded—in the rain—at the Cub River parking lot and headed for the high country past Willow Flat. We headed off-trail after climbing for a while as the rain turned to snow and stayed that way the entire rest of our ride. We did make a side trip to the old plane crash site in Pat Hollow.
The snowfall varied from fairly heavy to full-on blizzard conditions. After playing off-trail for a while, we determined it would be a little safer to head back to the trail and head over the mountain to St. Charles for lunch. While sitting on a ridge in the snowstorm we heard thunder several times. Interesting.
Even staying on the trail was challenging at times as the snow was falling so heavy that we couldn’t see the trail markers during some stretches of trail.
After a great lunch at the Minnetonka Market and Cafe in St. Charles, we headed back over the mountain and quickly discovered that several inches of new snow had already fallen and easily covered up our tracks from the ride over.
It snowed all the way back to the Cub River parking area, sometimes heavy and sometimes lighter but all the while snowing.
So the conditions are going to be pretty dang good this weekend in the Franklin Basin.