Grey Days: What to Do When Winter Sucks

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Four-season living includes an early winter “shoulder” phase that can seem grey and bleary, especially when it seems to be lasting too long.

In many regions this syndrome is worsened by climate change: winters can flip flop between extremes but generally become warmer in places, prolonging the grey days before snowfall. Snow also is less reliable and just when you get a base it often melts away only to freeze the next day, leaving you with more grey.

What to do?

There might be a strong tendency to feel miserable. But, really, we shouldn’t go there.

We can start by realizing that the “friluftsliv,” the fresh air lifestyle, doesn’t rely on any one weather type appearing at any specific time. There’s always plenty to do. I’ll explore some ideas…

Yes, this can be tough to believe in and our faith can be sorely tested when the grey days turn to weeks or when great snow gets nuked by rain that if just one degree colder would have been more great snow.

So what can we do?

For myself, I’m glad that I discovered cyclocross: it’s a sport and a type of bike-play that seems best when the weather is greyest and “worst.” It has really helped me happily bridge the weeks between glorious autumn and wonderful snow.

But, for whatever reason, it seems like CX has been a fad here in the USA and has recently contracted to an extent and perhaps lost some of its unique American party spirit. Thankfully there’s still plenty of awesomeness around. It’s also one of my only sports fandoms, so I get to enjoy watching the World Cup racers on video replays or even live-streaming.

The huge limiter for me of cyclocross is that it becomes much less conducive once the ground freezes. The minimal tires are overly stressed and lose their smushy cush that made it feel a bit like skiing. Also, right about when the ground freezes all the regional events are finished as is any local practicing. …Even though the (warmer) European season is just hitting its peak and fandom is still feeling hot.

Many people have seized on the recent innovation of fat-biking. I haven’t done it much but it seems like it is a popular solution for fun during the grey days after regular mt-biking fades. I’m not sure how this all works, though. Fat tires are good in soft conditions with packed snow, sand, and possibly fragile freeze-thaw trail conditions. However, when trails are thawed I’m pretty sure that even fatties are discouraged. When the trails are frozen then my impression is that they are rough and harsh and so regular suspension might be as beneficial as fatness. Maybe full suspension becomes cooler then? Maybe sus plus a plus-size tire? My impression is that fat-bikes are kind of slow and heavy unless they are very pricey carbon in both frames and wheels. Anyway, people do still seem to enjoy biking of various kinds in the grey days. …However, these days tend to be chilly and often somewhat muddy or icy-greasy, hovering around 30-40’s, so those who incline toward the road or even gravel get to enjoy greater exposure and faster speeds and more layering and sweat-up challenge. (Sadly, my own new-found love of bike handling has made straight-line riding much less appealing.) Still, strategic use of various bikes can be enjoyable sometimes.

If a cold snap hits before the snow, you can catch some awesome black ice skating. Skating is the best and easiest way to have fun in the grey before the white. Find a remote, woodsy, sheltered wetland and the skating experience can feel like trail exploring.

Here’s a great way to help with grey days: do trail work. It’s good exercise. And the funnest kind of trail work is the visioneering involved with making casual XC ski singletrack. Find territory where this is suitable and permissible and have yourself a blast. It is the lowest-impact sort of trail work. No ‘tread’ per se is created. Go into the woods and look for the lines that best use the terrain then kick aside brush and deadfall to create routes that let you flow the land once the snow flies. This is trail-building that basically can’t even be seen if you don’t know where to look. …But once it snows and you ski it in a few times you suddenly have a flow trail par excellence. You can add in gladed pitches for earned turns if your land is steep or ridgey enough. You can line-out about a half mile a day this way. Now that the leaves are off the trees you can easily see the terrain. And if the temps are thawing you can readily move logs and rocks aside. I’ll saw logs that are big enough or off the ground and in the way, but I find that smaller logs on the ground can be ramped with even smaller logs, like for biking, and add fun to the ski flow.

Except for thorns, one could also build fatbike trail in this way, and stack up logs, rocks, to make casual features along the way. It wouldn’t work for regular mt-bike because casual, low-impact forest trail doesn’t disturb loam and duff and so would be too soft.

Urgent! Sometimes the sun comes out, even if briefly. You need to get out in the sun when this happens, even just for a walk around the block, even for a minute at work. It’s really important to get what sun you can to avoid seasonal depression.

Trail running can also be a thing at this time of year. If you’re feeling chilly, bring ski poles to work the arms and increase warmth.

You can also do some exterior house-work. Maybe not so fun, but still.

You can also go rollerskiing. It’s a thing.

Here’s another major tip for relief at this time of year: TRAVEL! Go somewhere you like. Drive to snow. Hopefully it’s not that far away. Carpool with your pals and make a day of it.

You could also do a little hunting of some kind since there are usually a few open seasons still near the end of the year.

You can go on walks. Carry a weighted pack to make more work. Get groups together. Make bonfires.

Build a sweat lodge or a sauna. Create a plunge pool for cooling off.

Remember, people in various regions all have had to cope culturally with varying degrees of grey weather. No amount of grey should keep us from enjoying the beauty of nature as it happens to be for us. Yes, change is hard. (This attitude also fits in with skiing on whatever amount of snow we do end up getting.)

This is a decent time of year to do things where you alternate between chilly and cozy, between getting hot and cooling off.

Winter itself is a good time to play with the back’n’forth of cozy versus active, but the grey days before the skiing gets good is when active people basically have the least amount of fun things to do. So it’s the ideal time to ramp up the cozy. Don’t put on 10 pounds, though! It’s also the holidays when we tend to eat more. So keep up the daily base fitness routine even though it might have to be done indoors: a little is better than none!

Of course, many people today are joining gyms or are buying interactive Zwift bike-trainer systems: some find themselves preferring online exercise to the fresh air! It’s a great ingredient for many, especially for serious athletes, but be careful! Really, it should be just one part of a mix.

Since we are likely to have at least a few days of ice-skating in the grey early winter and then again after a snow-melt, it makes sense to go skating at an indoor rink when the ice isn’t good, just to stay ready for when it is. It’s possible also to do inline skating outside as a way to prep for real ice, but it requires a very smooth surface to be pleasant to rollerskate on when it’s 30-40’s deg — asphalt hardens in the cold and gets bumpier. (Bring your poles!)

When it’s grey cold rain, though? I’d say it’s time to enjoy a good book.