1am
Greetings and welcome!
I looked at the various trail reports and most said a lot of the same things.. Icy trails with some bare spots, and some pretty bad ones.
When we melted down last week sunny spots took a beating. More sheltered trails held a base pretty well. That base got icy from the freeze that cycle, and a lot of it is intact and just waiting for a little snow.
The snow and freezing rain from earlier this week helped to put something between us and the dirt, but it wasn’t much. It is probably 1/4″ of snow and 1/8″ of ice on top. It did survive today’s sun for the most part. At sunset the sheet covering my previously bare ground in the wood yard had no snow left, but the ice layer was still there, giving just a little under my feet. That will freeze in hard by morning.
The Paul Bunyan crew did their best to groom the trail along Hwy F yesterday. It broke it up and left at least a little free snow on the trail, but for warm running sleds it might be borderline.
When I saw the NST/ railroad grade in Lakewood it was a mix of good coverage and gravel spots. One report had a lot of gravel in some areas.
A FaceBook post yesterday said that some riders found nice conditions heading NW out of Townsend up toward Laona and Robert’s Lake. They liked it so much they are going back out in the morning.
We need snow and time is short.
We have two systems on watch right now. Earlier in the day I did not like the forecast models at all with both storms tracking too far west and putting us into the liquid precip. That changed over the course of the evening and they look a lot more promising.
The Thursday night/Friday morning storm looks like mostly snow, and we could see 2-3″. Don’t rule out a little liquid mixed in.
The Saturday afternoon/Sunday storm is a bigger one, that if it lines up in our favor, could be a 4″+ storm. Ninety hours out it looks good, but a lot can change in that amount of time.
I was reading an article this week that a fellow named Todd Palin (who is married to some politician) is competing in his 25th Iron Dog Race up in Alaska. The article said that he won four of them so far.
The Iron Dog is an Alaskan cross country snowmobile endurance race where they run 2,030 miles. The winning time that I saw last year was just under 41 hours. I don’t care who you are or what you ride, that is tough as nails.
That is it for now. Have a good Thursday and thank you for visiting!
RJB