Niagara River! Cold, very very windy, got it done! I should have read the rules first: "public but free" water put this as self-supported, not unsupported. Still okay to submit because I don't have to beat supported times, and this does beat the unsupported. I would have bought more food if I knew I was already self supported...
The wind was INTENSE. Many trails were closed, but passable. Under fueled and appropriately dressed for the 30F and 30MPH winds.
Gear: Clifton 6’s, thin biking socks, 2XU shorts and tracksmith winter tights. All good there.
Tracksmith waffle upper, wind jacket, taking the jacket on an off for various points. Sweated through the upper from wearing the jacket too long. Went from jacket open, jacket off, to hood up and zipped down for the biggest winds.
Buffs for neck and insulated buff+running cap on top, those worked.
Smartwool thin gloves and LL bean winter mittens, rotating the mittens on and off a bunch too. Those worked!
Backpack with yaktrax, headlamp, extra battery pack, extra gloves…all unused.
Fuel: 2x14oz with scratch mix in hours 1+2. Beef stick at hour 2.
At HR 2, took a GU and filled up bottles with boiling hot water, added 1 LMNT salt to each. Boiling hot watermelon salt tasted exactly like hot jolly rancher, and the other bottle had a suprise packet of plain salt. Hot salty water was grossss. Added a haberno lemon salt to that one too. Worked them both down by hour 4, and filled with plain water at the Radisson (is this unsupported? it’s open 24/7 and free) taking a extra fill and drink to get the salt out.Took a GU at 3hrs, 180cal rice cake at 3.5 hours, and a GU at 4 hours. That was it for fuel, so I was definitely shy on calories for those last 2.5 hours…having only taken ~530cal total up to that point. A whole bin of PB pretzels remained in the tank for the trip, though. The pretzels and lack of fuel might have contributed to my old man pace.
Trail closures: The trail out of devil’s gorge was closed (whirlpool stairs), took them anyway. The stairs down to the gorge by the bridge next were closed, tried to find an alternate way but then took them. There was another closure on that trail…a minor washout that there was a worn path around. Final closure, and this one I didn’t skirt, was the viewing deck for horseshoe falls, it was WET. I got a bit wet from the american side falls already, and that part was closed and more noticeably, there were some people around (didn’t see a soul near the other closures). Also a bridge in buffalo had some weird closure signs, it was like that this summer, and I had to find a way around a bit.
The worst conditions for ice were where the wind and waves were breaking onto bikepath by I-190 and freezing, but I could go around that.