I couldn’t get out to ride until mid-Wednesday afternoon. But that certainly was not the end of the world for me.
It gave the February sun a chance to soften up the trail surface to keep the slides and heat-exchangers happy. And it doesn’t get really dark until after 6pm now.
First order of business was to take a stroll around Indian Lake village. In this video, I ran C8 down through Bear Trap Swamp, crossed Route 28/30, went by Mountain Fitness Gym, split right onto S84, then another right onto Benton Road, then S87/42nd and Broadway, Adirondack Lake, S86/Little Canada to Lone Birch, then back to One Stop, to Crow Hill Road, then down to C8/Sabael trail.
You can see some thin spots and a few corners scuffed to dirt, but the trails are entirely ride-able and enjoyable to ride:
Onto Perkins Clearing
I thought the easiest way to get some nice miles in would be to run the lakes and do a Perkins Clearing/Speculator run.
There was a fairly big ice heave, just where the C8/Sabael trail dumps onto the lake. Indian Lake and Lewey Lake were a bit rough, but had perfectly good snow coverage. The campgrounds were a particularly brutal mixture of washboard bumps and sno-cross moguls, yuk!
2 Miles from Hell was a nice ride. Perkins Clearing had been heavily groomed, but faint low studders were still embedded through the majority of it, as a reminder of how rough things got last weekend. But Carpenter Hill Road through LP9/Nichol Vly Road was excellent riding!
Here is my favorite spot on LP9 with a scenic view of the mountains through the logged woods. When I ride solo, I stop here almost every single time:
Down to Speculator
“Whittaker Lake” trail down to Wolf Hill Road was a good ride. S41C/Hatchery Brook was simply AWESOME: Freshly groomed, flat as a board and almost nobody touched it today.
C4/LP3 down to Speculator was a pretty good ride with some snirt on the corners. LP4 to Mountain Market and Business-Access-Trail were good rides.
River Trail was in decent shape. C4 from the River into the Tree Farm was a pretty good ride. Cave Hill Road had been groomed, but still retained near constant studder-rollers. That wasn’t much fun so I turned tail only a mile or so past the bridge.
S41/Silver Hill was a really nice ride back up to….
…S41C/Hatchery Brook which I was sure to run again!
Back home…
Perkins Road Southern Bypass was a good ride through with just a few scuffed corners. The rest of the evening ride home was similar to how I found it going in, except that 2 Miles of Hell had grown some soft studders from some riders who don’t realize the value of a steady throttle thumb.
Bottom line
90 miles for a late day – early evening ride, not too shabby! Trails were much better riding than they were over the weekend. Now that last week’s bounty of snow has finally been assimilated into the base, the grooming should hold up much better now.
I caught this nice shot after 5pm on Wolf Hill Road in the Speculator Tree Farm:
You can see the snow is still plenty deep in the woods. As long as we don’t get much rain prior to THIS weekend, you should be good to go if you want to hit up ilsnow land. We should be OK through Monday, then Tuesday and Wednesday will give us some big hurt.
The late sunsets are nice, but those longer and longer days will eventually end our snowmobiling season. There is more winter behind us than ahead of us.
Moral of the story: Don’t wait! 😉
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
This report is brought to you by Pilot Knob Marina in Lake George. Just get off Northway I-87 Exit 20, then follow NY Route 149 East until you hit the junction of NY Route 149 and Bay Road. Pilot Knob Marina features a wide selection of new and pre-owned Arctic Cat snowmobiles & ATVs. If you see Nick Barber, tell him that Darrin @ ilsnow.com sent ya!
