Update 2/18/18
There was decent snowmobile traffic around Indian Lake village on Saturday and I saw the groomer making a pass in town Saturday afternoon.
Then we got a fresh 2 inches of snow Saturday Night.
Asking for trail conditions of individual trails is the wrong question. Just get up here and ride either Sunday or Monday before we get hit with the Presidents’ Week meltdown. There is no need to over think this…
Report 2/15/18
Crazy Cal and I wanted to hit the Childwold and Cranberry Lake area, even if we couldn’t get some friends to go with us. 😉
So we trucked up to Horseshoe Lake Thursday morning. Route 421 was absolutely brutal! Potholes, frost heaves everywhere. Only 6 miles on Route 421 to park at Horseshoe Lake, but it felt like 16 miles. OK…I know this is nothing new for Route 421. But I’ll never conceive how a state highway can be so neglected over so many years. At least the road wasn’t icy to make matters even worse.
Ride to Childwold
After unloading at Horseshoe Lake, the first 10 miles of C-7A was magnificent riding! A lot of it was near-perfect. Even C-7/Railroad looked like it had great snow coverage when we went through the intersection.
Here is how it looked to start our ride:
We then hit S-79 thence C-7C up to Thirsty Moose. Most of that was good riding, but the trails got thin to icy, especially under the thick evergreens through Massawepe Road.
At Thirsty Moose, we continued along C-7C and hit S-77. That ranged from fairly smooth to slight studders. Some places were pretty thin and icy.
On to Cranberry Lake
Once we got reunited with C-7A, we decided to make a run to Cranberry Lake. At least two trails that had signs pointing to Cranberry Lake were closed. Along the way, C-7A from intersection 5, crossing Route 3, until the junction with S-88 alternated from excellent riding to sheets of ice on corners and hills.
S-88 was decent, but had a really nasty chuckhole where a creek was cutting under the trail. Trail 712 really sucked, just low, hard-studders through most of it. I’m guessing it’s so rough because that has become the main link to Cranberry Lake with converging traffic due to the other trail closures.
At the intersection with Trails 712 and S-88 , we saw that C-8 was plowed and closed for snowmobiling in both directions.
After we got through the Trail 712 torture chamber, we hit a fairly brutal stretch of C-8. Then we took S-89 down to Cranberry Lake, which was a good ride down to the village, but got thin and quite icy before we entered the village here:
We couldn’t find the alleged S-81 to loop out of the village, so we doubled back to C-8. After a stretch of skanky road riding, we followed a freshly groomed stretch of C-8 for several miles. That appeared to be a good ride down to Wanakena, but after we encountered the logging caution signs, the trail quickly devolved into a rough sheet of ice with rocks thrown in for good measure. So we turned tail and headed back.
We had considered making a run toward “Little Blue Mountain” from there, but ultimately decided against it because it appeared there would be a lot of skanky road riding from our vantage point.
To Seveys Point
So we arched back from where we came to hit Seveys Point for gas top-off and for lunch. The last stretch of C-7A to Seveys Point was a weird combination of smoothness, studders and wet spots. There is a good variety of food at Seveys Point there if you are looking for a quick lunch stop with a nice seating area. Not a bad place for the middle of no-where. 🙂
Attempt at Little Blue Mountain
After lunch, we attempted to make a run at Little Blue Mountian via C-7A. Well, that came to a screaming halt right here:
At this point, it was mid-afternoon and the trail conditions were deteriorating seemingly by the minute under 50-degree warmth. We deemed it time to make the run back to the truck.
We pretty much followed C-7A all the way back. Some of it was getting extremely icy. Some of the hills were sheets of ice with water running down them. Some of it was great riding and some of it was like Splash Mountain, which was its own fun. The last several miles back to Horseshoe Lake was an excellent final dash to the truck.
And I shot this nice river pic along the way back:
Bottom line
We finished with 110 miles for the day.
Was it the best ride ever? Certainly not…
Will I be glad we did this ride when I’m sitting on the pine next week? Oh yeah…
I ride this area so seldom that a lot of it becomes new to me all over again. In my past couple of trips up there, I have always followed the leader. Today, I was the leader, so it was an adventure…made even more so by all of the trail closures. GPS and maps were a definite asset. Get the map published by St. Lawrence County Snowmobile Association and Member Clubs.
This is a great area to ride. It didn’t see its finest hour today, but that’s to be expected under the conditions.
Weekend Outlook
Getting back to ilsnow land, I’m not sure what to tell you. My ride to Speculator and back on Wednesday was good, but conditions have gone downhill quickly on Thursday with a bit of rain and a lot of warmth.
All the lakes we saw Thursday afternoon were slushy or wet when we went past them. So they will probably freeze into glare ice or rough frozen slush before the weekend. Trails will have a ride-able base, but will be icy in places with studs and scratchers perhaps needed to break up the trail surface for cooling and lubrication. The weekend traffic could be heavy enough to break up the trail surface up somewhat.
A weather system could clip us with snow later Saturday night, so keep your fingers crossed for that.
Don’t know what to tell you except you’ll need to weight the possibility of riding this weekend vs the possibility of not doing any riding the following week or perhaps even next weekend.
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
This report is brought to you by Steet Ponte Auto Group. Many of the vehicles here in Indian Lake are bought from the Steet Ponte. Co-owner Joe Steet is a huge fan and booster of ilsnow.com. If you’re looking for a new truck, give Steet Ponte a good look.
