Well… Wednesday’s ride was a case of “if you don’t succeed, try again!”
In the morning, I started at 6:30am to get a jump on things. Turns out that C8 heading out of Indian Lake toward Cedar River Headquarters had other ideas for me. The trail was studdery, which wasn’t it’s biggest problem.
Tuesday night’s mini-warmup to 35*F had combined with heavy traffic to make the trail quite hardpacked with temperatures having already dipped back to 25*F by daybreak Wednesday. The carbides dug into the hardpack and occasionally refused to steer into turns, which was a big problem. It was a dangerous situation at times. On top of that, the trail was giving up NO cooling material, even with the scratchers deployed. The overheat lamp tripped a few times and I found the track and tunnel to be nearly completely dry.
That’s not fun or safe riding. So, about 5 miles into the ride, I called it a morning and made the run back to the compound – while dipping into any loose snow off-trail I could find.
With nothing better planned for the day, I just slipped back to bed and slept until 11am. Then I did some chores and by early afternoon, I was itching to go back out for a ride. With the groomers likely to be out and mid-day traffic churning the trail surface loose, I figured I was sure to have better fortune my next time around.
On to Speculator!
I found the Indian Lake Parks and Rec Groomers to be out in force around town and the trails were indeed much softer than in the morning. My sled could steer well and keep cool, so I was good to go! I was feeling much better by the time I went live on Facebook:
After I shot that video, the groomer had just done S86 up by Crow Hill Road. Sweet, eh?
C8/Sabael trail had been freshly groomed and Furnell’s Field was looking mighty nice too:
Indian Lake had some stretches of slush on it, but a modest amount of throttle easily kept my sled on top of the slush. There weren’t as many frozen slush ruts as I had expected, which made it a nicer than anticipated ride. But there are some ruts out there – so be careful of them.
Campsides were just brutally bumpy – no surprise there. Lewey Lake was a similar crossing to Indian Lake – just shorter.
I had expected to just turn around and go back. But for giggles, I ran over to C8/Two Miles from Hell and found that nearly freshly groomed. So, I pressed on for a decent to good ride through there. The snow was pretty loose through there, so I don’t expect that particular groom to hold up long before another one is sorely needed.
S82C/Old Indian Lake Road was also nearly freshly groomed for a nice ride through. Perkins Clearing Road, S41/Mud Lake Road and LP9/Nichol Vly made for a nice loop. And I always love this spot on LP9:
I saw recent groomer tracks heading toward the Speculator Tree Farm so I saw the opportunity to add some more miles and smiles for the ride. And I hit the gold star by the time I reached the Pig Rock/Whittaker Lake trail:
And it was freshly groomed riding all the way down Wolf Hill Road and down onto Elm Lake Road:
And the magic continued thru Long Level Road:
Fly Creek Road hadn’t been groomed, so I just decided to turn tail and repeat the great ride back to Perkins Clearing the way I came. After all, with the limited riding time I had today, WHY NOT double dip in the awesome sauce?
The ride back home was mainly uneventful, save for hitting a modest sized frozen slush hump on Indian Lake – to remind me they are out here.
Banged out the victory lap. Looks like the groomers didn’t hit S87/42nd and Broadway or S86/Little Canada on Wednesday. But the riding was decent through those avenues and the next combover with the groomer will make them perfect. Adirondack Lake had slush and frozen ruts, but was far from the worst I’ve encountered on that pond.
Bottom line:
Wednesday’s ride was a story of two rides: A ride I cut bait on, and the ride that was meant for me. I’m still puzzled as to why the trails were so hard and borderline dangerous for me to steer on Wednesday morning with weather conditions that shouldn’t have left the trails quite that hard.. Guess I’ll just chalk it to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Glad I went out there and took a second stab at it. In the end, the ilsnow ground-n-pound machine picked up it’s own fumble, ran the rock for 94 miles and took it to the house in the Speculator Tree Farm during abbreviated action. Ain’t no shame in that!
For a snowmobiling season that has been largely derided as horrible, I’m rolling up some miles – granted, most of them have been accumulated in the past 3-4 weeks:
But hey, I’m getting out there and having fun which is what snowmobiling is supposed to be about.
Get out there! It’s cold outside, but that strong late-February sunshine baked the state highways dry by this afternoon – a reminder that we’re entering the Back 9 of Winter here in ilsnow land.
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.
