Slushy ride last night

It was a wet and slushy ride last night. There was still a lot of snow up there although it seems to be melting pretty fast. With any luck it will be gone before the night ride next Tuesday. Me and Nomad Nic showed up in the pissing rain and after some deliberations decided to go for a short ride. We managed to ride down to the TTA without too much difficulty, but from the bottom of the hill past the TTA, where a 6feet wide stream was washing over the trail, we basically had to hike-a-bike to Skull trail. Skull trail was actually somewhat rideable although some parts were pretty sketchy. At the top of skull rail we were already sweating after pushing the bikes and overdressing so off came one layer before we hiked up to the top of Niteshift in the torrential rain. Nic and I did our best to ride Niteshift but with the slush and the crusty snow the going was tough. One of us would lead, then catch a rut and be thrown off the trail, then the guy behind usually made it a bit further, seeing the mistakes of the leader. This is how we made our way to the step-up and the rest was actually rideable, super tachnical and lots of fun. We were both running ridiculously low tire pressures, so we were both pretty worried about pinch flats in the clear sections, but luckily we managed to avoid those. From Niteshift we made our way to the Shortcut, and down into the TTA which was quite sketchy as that last part was a gnarly mix of ice and mud, resulting in a unavoidable point and shoot descent .
This would normally have been a short ride, but because of the conditions it took us 1 hour and 40 minutes. All in all, a very interesting ride and lots of fun. Hopefully we'll get some more people coming out next Tuesday.