Tuesday 1-23-2024 Trails Closed

Greetings and welcome!

I may have mentioned this before.,.

El Nino Sucks!!

And this is no typical El Nino, this is a super strong El Nino as strong or stronger than 1998.

I just got word a few minutes ago that Iron Snowshoe has closed their trails and Oconto County is closing theirs tomorrow at 6am.

Who would have ever thought that on January 23rd there would only be one county in WI reporting good trails? Who would have imagined that almost the whole northern half of WI would be closed?

It is my habit to wait until it is almost time to ride before I even look at my snowmobiles. I know that if they have been through my shop once it won’t take much time to get them trail ready. There are no frozen bolts, seized shafts, the parts that need nevr-sieze have it and the ones that need locktite have it. The first time through takes a couple of nights in the shop. After that pre-season service takes an hour or two. I think that the latest that I have ever pulled one into the shop was about Christmas.

Not this year.

Due to some crappy weather and a bunch of distractions I haven’t even pulled them out of storage. I finally cleared the shop and today was going to be the day that the first one saw the shop. It is a process.. snowblow out the barn, get the ATV running, unhook the log splitter, drag the sleds out enough to get them started and run into the shop.

At the moment I don’t see any pressing reason to do that. We have bare minimum snow and according to the GFS forecast model there is no hope for any meaningful snow in the next 16 days. That takes us to Feb 8th. There is nothing to suggest any significant snow after that.

The big decision was should I spend half a week’s pay on liability insurance. So far that is a no. As the season progresses it makes less and less sense.

It is heartbreaking to think that we had a 10 day snowmobile season on very minimal trails, and most of the ten days were during an arctic outbreak. Worse yet is that the southern half of the state had a lot more snow than we got so we never saw typical traffic.

There is always a chance of snow in February and March.

Right now we are looking at 40ish temperatures for at least the next 10 days. On the tenth day (Feb 1) Weather Underground has us getting almost up to 50.

It is too soon to get out the fat lady clip, but I have a hunch that she is in the Green Room warming up.

Sorry to be such a bundle of joy today, but it is heartbreaking. I feel bad for the clubs that worked so hard on the trails, the people that dropped 30 grand on new sleds and didn’t get 500 miles, and for the trail stops that are already in for a lean year. Most of all I feel bad for the thousands of snowmobilers that didn’t get to ride this year.

I have done this a long time. (25th year!!) Usually when I get this depressed somehow it turns around. I would for sure welcome a big surprise.

Have a good one and thank you for visiting!

RJB