We had two groups of Germans in this week, Daimler-Chrysler employees. They both had good days, as did others I talked to this week.

This looks like springtime, though, so I wouldn’t recommend riding on the trails this weekend. I’m sure there’s enough snow everywhere in the woods, though — the noaa.gov snow depth map still shows 10″ on the ground in our area.

Cold temperatures are in the forecast until at least Sunday. Traffic looks very light, and we even have a few snowmobiles available for rent this weekend.

– Rob

” Lovells trail out (47) was nice and then trail 4 to Gaylord was sloshy but once you got north of Gaylord to Indian River was beautiful and was the smoothest ride I ever had. We did 200 miles and only about 10 miles of it was hard riding.”

There is still ice out there so be careful.

The current weather forecast calls for 3-7 inches of snow by Wednesday. Hopefully we get all of that, and good conditions return before the weekend. We’ll update again later in the week.

Trail Conditions: I went out last night to Lovells and back, in temperatures down to about -4 F. That’s cold, I probably shouldn’t have worn the open face helmet… Trail conditions were excellent; the snow seems to have compacted down to a nice hard base with the extremely cold temperatures. This trail hadn’t been groomed in about 36 hours (I was chatting with Keith, one of the groomer drivers earlier in the day) and there were only minor ripples in the trail. Except for the cold air, it was easy to maintain 35-40 mph without any major concerns over the bumps.

CRASH! We had a group of 5-6 young guys in here a week or two ago. Yeah, you know who you are…. We were extra careful to give them a long speech about how many accidents happen around here, usually involving various combinations of speed, youth, and stupidity. I think they had all three. They had been out for about 2 hours when one rider clipped a tree, ripping off the right side suspension. The rest of the machine missed the tree, but I think the driver’s head didn’t miss it. He was unconscious and was taken in a helicopter to the Traverse City hospital. Luckily for him it was only a major concussion, and he was out of the hospital in 24 hours. Hopefully he has medical insurance to cover the transportation and hospital bills. He’ll have a bill from us also…

The moral of the story? BE CAREFUL!

Most weekends in February are mostly or all booked up, but we do have openings during the week (unless you’re the guys referred to above).

Cheers,
Rob

Trail grooming started up again, with all three of our club’s tractors running. Traffic was very light this weekend (is there some football game on today?). We heard generally good reports for snow conditions, although a few people said that Lewiston, Gaylord, and Frederic trails were a bit rough on Saturday.

On the positive side, it’s already getting colder, and there is snow in the forecast. We don’t know yet if it will be enough snow, or what things will look like after the 40 mph winds that are also coming with the predicted storm. Hopefully we’ll have a better idea of the conditions by Thursday or so.

We’ve had so many rental inquiries this week that we’ve rented out snowmobiles from Terry’s and Sledheads as well (the other two rental facilities in town). We decided it was busy enough that we would go ahead and buy a few more machines. That’s when I found out that Polaris has updated the design of the Supersport, the snowmobile we’ve had for the past few years. In their infinite wisdom, they added a shorter seat, taller bars, and shorter windscreen:

I’m sure some people would like the taller bars and new seat. In don’t think it works for our typical casual rider, though. I’ve found a few more left-over new 2005/2006 Supersports for sale at a Detroit area dealership, and I’m going to pick them up today:

We’re still looking for the right two-rider machines. The Yamaha Venture Lite is unusual-looking (to be generous), but is a four-stroke two-up snowmobile priced almost low enough to let us rent it for our current rates.

Anyway, local conditions look to continue to be good. Traffic is picking up faster than we anticipated. If you’re planning a trip up here, consider making it during the week, or at least avoiding Saturdays. That way you’ll find:

• Less traffic on the trails
• Better trail conditions
• Better prices
• Better availability

We’ve had our machines out the past few days, and talked to other snowmobilers. Everyone has had pretty good reports of the trail conditions. The Grayling trail groomers are running as well as they can, although we’re at least one groomer vehicle short of what we need.

We do expect higher traffic this weekend, a three-day weekend for many people. We’ll update later when conditions change.

Temperatures are finally forecast to stay below freezing after Thursday, so we’ll look forward to snow after that….