I’ve been wanting to get in a snowmobile ride with Marcel Carrier of Northern (and Southern) Adirondacks Facebook Page fame for a while. We’ve crossed paths several times and I’m even an administrator on both Facebook pages. But snowmobiling friendships aren’t truly cemented until we ride!
My usual playbook to hit the Northern ‘Dacks is trailering up to Horseshoe Lake, then running C7A up the gut into Childwold. But Marcel informed me that the logging bypass trail had numerous mud and water spots. Therefore, it would be better to just haul an extra half-hour and start from Seveys Point.
Sounded good to me, because I was just fine with avoiding the 6 mile frost-heaved and pot-holed torture chamber known as “Route 421” that gets to Horseshoe Lake.
Heading off…
I met Marcel and June Carrier at Seveys Point just before 11am and let them lead the way. 🙂 Not sure I got all of the trails right for this report since I was hanging in the back and just enjoying the scenery, but here it goes:
We crossed onto the north side of Route 3 and headed thru C7A, S88 and C8, which were all groomed and pretty nice riding, although there were occasional stretches of carbide-clank.
10 miles into the ride, we had our first stop and chatted with some fellow snowmobilers who were out enjoying the day:
I even got to meet the President of the Cranberry Lake Mountaineers Snowmobile Club who was working on trail signage.
Pressing on…
Had thought about hitting Little Blue Mountain, but we were told it was thin and rocky going up – so we passed this time.
Instead, we arched over thru Packard Club and near Rainbow Club via S86 thence headed back southward via C8D toward Troopers Shed. That stretch hadn’t been groomed, but was still a decent ride….aside from some carbide clank, rough ice spots and a nice little river crossing.
A highlight of this ride were fighter jets from Fort Drum performing an aerial show almost directly overhead! Even saw a jet take a nearly right hand turn and shoot straight up into the sky with it’s afterburners flaring away. Awesome….
Marcel did a little sign fixing of his own:
Then we connected onto S81 down toward Cooks Corners, which was groomed and really nice riding aside from some scratchy spots and one particularly boney and icy stretch. We stopped at the “groomer shed” and socialized with a couple of Cranberry Lake Mountaineers‘ finest groomer operators inside a really nice camp for a while.
After that stop, we ran C8 back toward the direction of Seveys Point via S88 and C7A. We then ran C7C over to Thirsty Moose for dinner. Looks like Groomer Phil and his crew had done their magic on the Childwold trails. But those last couple of miles to the Thirsty Moose badly needed snow. Thankfully, we slithered over ice instead of frozen mud.
After dinner, we doubled back to Seveys Point to end the ride and load the sleds back onto the trailers. Netted about 65 miles and met a lot of new people who Marcel introduced me to…local characters who make snowmobiling great in their neck of the woods.
Couldn’t have asked for a better day to be out there, even if conditions were not mid-winter par. Easily the best quality riding I’ve had in this (to-date) forsaken winter. It was the kind of day I sorely needed to feel good about life.
If you want to join Marcel’s Facebook pages, hit them up here:
Both are rapidly growing communities and Marcel does a great job of keeping both pages on task. It’s an honor for me to count him as a friend, and a true force for good in Adirondack snowmobiling.
Bottom line
We’re nearly half-way through winter and time is slipping away to wait for perfect or even par. You have the green light to get up here this week, not for the promise of good conditions, but because it’s one of the few options you have…beside staying home on the couch.
If this is gonna be a bump-and-grind winter from start to finish, I’m rolling up my sleeves to slug it out. I can play any game….
Locally around Indian Lake and Speculator – groomers are out working the trails they can. But there just isn’t much material to work with. Some of it will be bad and some of it will be surprisingly good. I’ll get out and bang out some recon before the weekend and look into what kind of snow we may get Saturday into Sunday.
By the way – do not even THINK about riding your snowmobile on Long Lake. North of Adirondack Hotel is a sea of grey slush and the river is flowing under the Route 30 bridge. I wish I had stopped to take a picture on the way up this morning, to show how bad it was.
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
This report is brought to you by Progressive Motorsports, celebrating their 27th 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.
