Anyway, it looks like most had a good weekend out and about in some unexpectedly decent weather. Well between the arctic showers anyway
For myself, after a late start I drove down to Brians, the plan being for a ride over Ben Wyvis, taking in some of the Puffer trails, doing a bit of recon etc, not that we don't know those trails, but hey, any excuse. Up home there was a bit of snow on Saturday night with a good bit lying still in the morning, though by the time I drove to the A9 the sun was out and no snow or rain to be seen.
We left Brians to head to Contin, this time with lights in the backpack. I didn't think we would need them but Brian was insistent we take them after being caught out on our last few rides.
There had been a bit of rain over the week but it was a lot drier here than up home, the main bit that was chewed up was the fire road otherwise the rest was fine. We had a few showers, sleet and rain, throughout but most passed quickly. The top few klms up to where you leave the fire road and the rock section to Puffer Bill had been cleared of trees and so looked very barren and a disorientating on the narrow singletrack that is normally through the heather surrounded by trees, now wide open all around. There was a bit of ice up top on a section of the trail but nothing much really, just made you a bit cautious on the big rock sections just after. It didn't take too long until the lights were called for, and was glad we brought them as we were only about halfway back. We decided to take the quicker run back with the long section of sweeping downhill only to find a large, very large tree had fallen across the track. It took me a second or so to realise what I was looking at before I had to brake very hard as I was doing a fairly good turn of speed as the track had been smoothed out a bit, with none of the corrugations from the last few times here. Luckily I stopped just in time as there was a few branches sticking out ready to spear any idiot that dared to come down here in the dark
Once over we, or maybe that's I, took off quickly to make the most of the gravitational acceleration, having learnt little from the previous few minutes to only come sliding to a stop just in front of the next fallen tree, this one slightly lower, so at first the light beam from a distance went over it.
From here it was a good fast flowing, debris free, swooping trail back to the tarmac. The only issue being when I got right to the end of the trail and came to the set of concrete stairs, I was thinking 'left or right, left or right' when 'bing', my lights died
Battery dead 
At least it was at the end.Anyway that's a ramble about my ride out on the 1X1, don't know whether I mentioned it but I had a blast as usual
Jamie
Brian and his 1X1
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