Whiteout

Unfortunately the weather was not playing ball over on the East Coast today so the Fielding Riders' Wairarapa ride has been postponed until next weekend. But over here on the West side of the ranges we've had a nice sunny day (until now - it's deteriorating quickly as a type this) so I decided to rug up and head out on the Connie.

Heated grips on and the temperature gauge showing 7 degrees I made my way over to Fielding where I stopped for fuel. I had no real plans on where I wanted to go - I just wanted a decent ride and preferably to stay dry.

I left Fielding and made my way out towards Vinegar Hill. The weather stayed nice and I stopped briefly at the lookout for some pictures before making my way down the hill. All through Vinegar Hill there were damp places demanding a bit of care but once back out on the main road things dried up.

At Mangaweka I turned off to head through to Rangiwahia and home. The first section of this road is prone to slips and they'd obviously had quite a few through here recently as in places the road was covered in mud which slowed things up a bit. After a quick photo stop I continued on towards Rangi and some threatening looking clouds.

Just North of Rangi things darkened up a bit more and I started noticing some flakes of snow in the air - snow, really? Sure was, my the time I pootled through Rangiwahia it was really coming down and the wind was blowing hard. I've never ridden in snow like this and it was pretty interesting - I was getting blown around and having to wipe the snow off my visor pretty regularly. My little temperature gauge dropped down to 2 degrees and my speed also dropped out of respect to the conditions. I would have loved to stop and get a photo of the bike getting snowed on but conditions were pretty wild and I didn't want to get caught out if they got even worse, so on I rolled.

After about twenty minutes of snow I started to get patches of sun, then snow and then sun again as the weather finally started to improve. The rest of the ride into Kimbolton was done in fine weather on wet roads and the temperature gauge came back up to 7 degrees again. By the time I hit Fielding again the roads were dry and it was an uneventful ride home. A nice little ride of 180kms or so and even the snow was an experience worth having.


More pictures here.