Greetings and welcome!

It is 1:45am. I am off of work after an intense weekend having a beer as I watch the wood burner warm my house with the wood that I cut split with my own hands. There is about three inches of new snow outside.

I have a lot of challenges ahead of me to(day)morrow and all that I can think of right now is what a blessed man that I am. I got to meet and have fun with literally hundreds of snowmobilers, many of them friends of a decade or more. Thank you so much to everyone!

I am just blown away by what a great weekend that it was.

Random thoughts-

Reports had it that even though there was plenty of traffic and plenty of snow, the trails didn’t grow monster whoopties and stutter bumps. Powdery snow and a cold weekend as well as the snowmobile clubs’ dedication are probably to credit for that.

According to reports, the trails were still really nice Sunday night. That is awesome. I have seen warm weekends when a lot of people came and were greeted by rough trails due to the warm weather making the snow pack down into rough trails. It is great that it didn’t happen this weekend.

The snow today was light and steady. It was very fine with a little wind. It will be dense snow due to how small the flakes were.

About 10pm I dragged my friends outside of the Rapids to see the snow. As it the storm was fading out it did something that I have only seen a few times. The way that I described it was that the snow flakes were not freezing in the usual shape, but were more like looking at a quartz crystal. It looked like the ground was sprinkled with diamonds, and the falling snow looked like a disco show. You’d have to see in for yourself, but I’d put it the category of seeing the northern lights or hearing the lake sing (bew! bew!) on a cold night as the ice expands. Cool stuff at the end of a great weekend.

A quick look at the forecast models shows a few changes. A lot of people were very excited about the Tuesday snowstorm (18″+), and I was excited about the Thursday storm. Either one was supposed to be big. The Thursday storm, as predicted, got a LOT milder. Right now it looks like a nice 2-4 storm.

The Tuesday storm is not going to be huge with 16+ totals and so on according to all of my guidance. It does look like a significant storm, a lot like the last two, with 4-8 likely and 12 if it got big.

To be brutally honest, I’d be happy if it quit snowing for a couple of days. I have a big snow load on a couple of roofs and I need to go shovel some snow. The ice base that makes our trails so delightful also makes going on the roof a dicey proposition. Some of you asked me about who would shovel roofs. I made a few calls and asked at the bar and so far I have struck out.

I also have issues in the driveway where I need to push back snowbanks. The plow can’t throw the snow that high. In the valley I had to use the snowblower and cut back the banks and move the snow that the truck  worked hard to move.

I really don’t need more snow. I am spending more time moving it and losing time at work than I would like to. It is cutting into my potential riding time.

Here is the hook.. In December we would have loved to have had those storms, and in two or three weeks when the sun starts kicking our butt, we would love to have those storms keep sunny areas in great shape. Shut up and keep shoveling Raymond. The sooner you finish, the sooner you ride.

The conditions this coming this week are on a scale of one to ten… about a 900. We have a really strong ice base. We have a two foot compact snowpack and plenty of fresh snow. Between the ice and snow the road based trails are in great shape. This week will be in the 20s for high temps, and nothing below +8 for a low temperature. The conditions are perfect system-wide and it is comfortable riding, day and night. Priceless. This can’t last long.

Use your sick days wisely.

A lot of my Big Snow Page snowmobiling friends visited the Rapids Resort this weekend. I got pictures of some of you, I missed a lot of you too. My apologies and gratitude to you guys. Your support really means a lot. Thank you !

I like doing these pictures. I have almost a million pix under my belt as a professional photographer. These are some of my favorite times when I get away to visit and find out where you are from and stuff. If I don’t ask you please ask me. I like doing it.

Thank you all, and thank you for visiting and have a good week!

-RJB

Use your sick days wisely.