Greetings and welcome!
Sorry about being late today.
I got a look at Lakewood/Townsend yesterday and Athelstane today. There are a lot of trails that look good still, even though a lot have staining or minor snirtyness to them.
Some of the trails north of Townsend along 32 were getting dark, but farther north they looked nice where they crossed the road.
There are some bad spots, and they are the usual ones. Rumor has it that the trails around the flowages took a lot of traffic when it was warm last week and some of those are in less than great shape.
You can ride but there will be good and bad spots. Most of what I saw in my travels looked good.
I saw that the groomers for Tonsend, Iron Snowshoe and Athelstane/Near North were out in the last 24 hours, and Slug said that they groomed Ranger City and the trails by him were mostly nice.
Looking at the weather.. We have a cold day today. There is a brisk wind and at the moment it is up to 21, but it does not feel like it. We are in for more cold and wind this week. Friday the cold is expected to break and bring a weekend on the warm side.
Right now the NWS is showing Friday 20, Saturday 30, and Sunday in the mid-30s. The GFS is showing some snow possible, but it has moved the storm back to Sunday.
I do not like the GFS forecast for next week. It shows several warm days in a row followed by late week rain. It would really put a crimp in our weekend if it played out as shown. There is a 6-9 storm shown 2 weeks out, followed by another one that might be rain.
The GFS is hanging on to the idea of going to a zonal flow and much more active pattern. That puts us in play for bigger storms, but it comes with some risk too.
Between that and how warm the sun is getting I wouldn’t wait too long to ride. The sun is already a factor and it won’t get better.
The Iron Snowshoe is having a meeting of associate members at the tent at the High Falls Fish-O-Rama this Saturday. The Iron Snowshoe is owned and run by the member busineses. Recently they started the associate member program to let trail supporters join the club. Now they are getting more organized about it and that is what the meeting is about. The meeting is at 10am in the tent at the Fish-O-rama and radar run. I will have more about that on the Iron Snowshoe site when I update that tonight.
I am also planning on returning here with some pictures that I took in Lakewood yesterday. At the moment I have to run off again, but I will return. In the meantime have a good Tuesday and thank you for visiting!
RJB