Alright! Let’s kick off the first snowmobiling weekend of the season for ilsnow land!
Indian Lake
If you are riding in the Indian Lake area this weekend, just truck it over to the Brown’s Farm near the Cedar River Road and pay the old lady $5/sled to park. Then ride out to Moose River Plains from there. The Plains have been groomed this week and were reported to be good early-season riding. As per usual, get here Friday or early Saturday morning to maximize the best results before the weekend traffic tears it up.
If you try the other trails, you will encounter rocks, bumps and swampy spots. Simple as that until we freeze everything up and get another dump of white gold.
And for now, the Newcomb trail is still being plowed for logging. So it would be best to consider that trail closed for now….
Speculator
I had an eyewitness report that Perkins Clearing has been groomed. Since the south end of Perkins Clearing Road is probably being plowed for logging and closed to snowmobiling, the best play call would be to park at the Mason Lake Parking Lot on Route 30 about 7 miles north of Speculator village and attack Perkins Clearing Road from the north end.
Be careful when riding the other trails, because they will probably have typical early season hazards to negotiate, like rocks, bumps and swampy spots.
The Speculator Tree Farm may offer some good riding if you can get in there. But I heard that Elm Lake Road and Fly Creek Road are being logged, so that unfortunately would eliminate a nice loop.
Bottom line
If you stick to the seasonal roads that aren’t being plowed, you can have a good time this weekend. If you venture elsewhere, you’ve got some tedious riding ahead. Also, stay off the lakes! We’ll get some snow late Friday night into Saturday morning to keep things fresh.
Be especially careful, because for most of us, this will be our first ride of the year.
You can keep up with incoming trail reports on the ilsnow.com bulletin board.
Next week?
Lots of mixed signals for next week are leaving some worry about a thaw.
Here is the 5-Day ECMWF ensemble temperature anomaly map for next week:
You can see the cold to our north and warmth to our south, suggesting we may be a battle zone next week.
We may skate by without much damage before next weekend. But there may be room for a 24-36 hour thaw that could spoil things. We’ll just have to keep an eye on it.
After that?
In the Christmas to New Year’s time frame, massive EPO- ridging will tap into the cross-polar connection:
The meat of the frigid cold would accumulate in south-central Canada and the Northern Plains States at first. But the jet stream could become pretty active with opportunities for snow events here.
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
This report is brought to you by Progressive Motorsports, celebrating their 25th year. They live, eat and breathe snowmobiling. Stop in today and see for yourself! Be sure to tell Karen that Darrin @ ilsnow.com sent ya.
