After the S84 beatdown to cap off Wednesday’s 218 miler, my goal today was simply to get out of bed and ride my snowmobile for ANY distance at all.
Speculator was the one direction I hadn’t ridden this year, so I wanted to give that a shot. My back and shoulders were in pain with every bump for the first several miles, then I got the kinks worked out and was on my way!
C8/Sabael trail had been groomed to be passable. You’ll need to take it easy through there and be wary for mud-holes and water bars:
Ran Indian Lake all the way down. There was tons of slush and plenty of places where sleds broke through the slush to cause frozen ruts. It was not very fun. I can’t tell you the ice is “safe” just because I made it across unscathed. Think very long and hard about whether the reward is worth the risk for you.
Campsites trail was GROOMED. Yay!
Lewey Lake was another slushy and rutted crossing. 2 Miles from Hell was recently groomed but held many stubborn bumps. Sections of the trail were bony. Check out the new snowmobile parking lot on 2MFH!
Perkins Clearing
Touched down at Perkins Clearing Road and was ready to go to work:
Had a nice ride down to the Perkins-T, hung a right onto Jessup River Road then hit a nearly untracked Carpenter Hill Road. Crossed Mossy Vly then hit Mud Lake Road. Almost all of it was great riding.
Then I continued down to the south end of Perkins Clearing Road for more great riding!
Speculator Tree Farm
Hatchery Brook trail was bumpy and at times bony ride into the Speculator Tree Farm. But the reward was fantastic when I got to Elm Lake Road:
Elm Lake Road and Long Level Road were nearly perfect. Fly Creek Road had very slight ripple-bumps throughout, but good riding. Old Route 30 was plowed to Robbs Creek Road for shared snowmobile/logging use – but enough snow on it to keep everything cool and happy.
The rest of Old Route 30 down to the steel bridge had wavy bumps, but nothing terrible. How can you complain about seeing this along the way?
For giggles, I tried continuing on C4 down toward Griffin Gorge. I gave up on that after a few minutes of encountering washouts and snow covered boulders. Not fun…
Then I ran S42 along Route 30 down toward Wells for a little bit. That was bony, choppy and rough so I turned tail after a couple of minutes.
On to Speculator
LP4A was a nice run up to Speculator. The village trails were snirty to bony. Some choppy and bumpy, others fairly smooth:
I had considered making a recon run westward toward Oxbow Lake. But I wasn’t too keen on running rutty lakes and twisting through narrow woods trails any more than necessary. I did hear that C8/Spy Lake trail would be groomed Thursday afternoon.
Was inclined to stay on easy street, which meant pointing the nose of my sled to Perkins Clearing and running C4 straight up the gut!
Back to Perkins Clearing
C4 from Speculator up to Perkins Clearing ranged from snirty to bony and I kicked pebbles and stones all the way up. But it was groomed as smooth and flat as I could have possibly hoped for, given the low snow conditions on that trail. It was amazing…
Once back up to Perkins Clearing, I hit LP9/Nichol Vly trail which was great riding, except for a couple of places I hit rock tops in the swamp. Then hit Carpenter Hill Road again and turned left to run to the back side of Perkins Clearing.
From there, I ran C4/8 Big Brook trail for about a mile for a look-see. It had bumps, but I gotta say it wasn’t close to being terrible.
Then I ran all the way back to Perkins-T and ran down to Mud Lake Road to do a loop with LP9/Nichol Vly trail. By the time I was done with Perkins, I had run each trail in both directions at least twice for the day – which maximized my fun and easy riding.
Return to Indian Lake
Was sure to run Lewey Lake and Indian Lake back up to home base before it got dark. I ran the victory loop and S86/Little Canada between Sawmill Road and Lone Birch was by far the best offering:
I saw a decent number of snowmobiles swirling around town before I rolled into the compound with a “pedestrian” 120 miles clicked off for the day. Didn’t get greedy to tack on more miles – was content to call it a day while I still felt good.
Weekend outlook
This will be a real snowmobiling weekend here in ilsnow land. I suspect it’ll be quite busy around here – so you’re likely to find a mixed bag of treats out there. And we’ll actually have some legitimate mid-winter cold too.
Have fun and stay safe!
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
This report is brought to you by Progressive Motorsports, celebrating their 28th 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.
