Michigan Trail Report

Trail Reports


Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/26

Greetings Sledders,

Real quick update, seems like it’s been run, run, run since we’ve had those nights where it’s been 35 below ought and I’m gettin’ tarred.

We picked up 3-4″ yesterday which means that I had to plow today which made me even more tarreder and it also means the trails are in good shape and I believe that you’ll find good rides until the weekend traffic has it’s way especially with trail 7, the expressway of trails, all other segments should hold up okay.

Groomers are running on the regular schedule and trail 7 won’t be out of control for too long Sat. afternoon.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,

Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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February 26, 2015 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/18

Greetings Sledders,

Those that chose to tackle the frigid ( colder than a well diggers apprentice ) weather reported great rides over the past weekend. The hard snow count for the weekend was 3 13/64 ths and it was really hard to get that count on the ruler but it was too windy to get a flake count and it seems that that degree of accuracy describes how desperate we’ve been for replenishing snows this year. Accuracy in the snow count and trail conditions are imperative, look what happened to Brian Williams, although I wouldn’t mind the 6 months off part. That amount of snow made a real difference and provided a snirtectome on a number of our trails and trail segments that were somewhat unsightly.

Okay we get it, on with the report if you please. Overall the trails are good with the same exception, that being trail 7 South of M-72 and North of 4 mile. It’s 50/50 as I write this meaning half of it is the white we’ve all come to love and half is dare I print it, snirty.

I anticipate that trail 7 between Grayling and Frederic or Frederic to Grayling depending on how you want to look at it, will get the usual Saturday traffic which means that it will be rough until we rectify that condition late in the afternoon. All other segments should hold up and all in all I’m going with Good. Bundle up cause it’s going to be cold until Saturday which will be in the 20’s.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,

Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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February 18, 2015 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/11

Greetings Sledders,

We are happy to report that everyone that hitched their respective wagons with us over the weekend reported good to better than that rides. This includes one of our favorite Ohio groups that long ago figured out that Friday you ride North and West and Saturday your best bet is to head East young man head East, and they did and found good trails together with a side bar into off-trail adventures.

Okay let’s talk about this weekend. For the most part you will find good trails especially early on, say Friday, where the trails will be tight. Hell everything is going to be tight considering the temps they are talking about. Brings back memories of last year. Bring both sets of long johns.

The segment that continues to bother me is #7 South of M-72 and North of 4 mile. We are grooming it but it’s pretty snirty and hopefully the snow in the forecast will help. And I’m calling this section fair. All of the other trails are good, with snirt here and there and again a little new snow will help. Our grooming is back to a regular schedule which means heads up on the Lovells trail during the daytime.

That’s about it for now

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,

Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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February 11, 2015 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/04

Greetings Sledders,

We’ve seen some snow recently, which has improved some trail segments to fair or better close to Grayling and good the closer you get to Frederic. That one mile South of Frederic line has gotten closer to Grayling with stretches of good white snow and some stretches of snirt, but all in all an okay trail. The same holds true for trail #79. Hopefully they’ll hold up to weekend traffic.

The segment that bothers me most is trail #7 South of M-72 and North of Four mile rd. as this one is twisting and turning through hardwoods and needs plenty of what we ain’t been gettin’ to withstand the traffic it gets. I’m giving that trail a poor, the rest gets fair to good.

The forecast looks good for the weekend with snow and below freezing temps to prevail.

Not in the best of moods today because I went for a ride with my Big Fat Buddha Buddy Pete from Sledheads, and some of the Boys from the club and promptly lost my cell phone which like most people’s it has nine kagillion of phone numbers on it and like an idiot I didn’t have them backed up. Hell I thought backed up had something to do with reverse, or a sink or somethin’ until Buddha explained it to me.

This should be a decent weekend and.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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February 4, 2015 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/29

Greetings Sledders,

Quick update. We picked up about 3″ overnight. This is certainly not enough snow to go hootin’ and hollerin’ buck necked down main-street, but it is snow, something we’ve not seen much of this year.

I’m going to upgrade the trails to fair only, can’t get all excited and label them anything greater than that with just 3′. However, that 3′ on the frozen snirt as a base will make the trek to better snow a tad easier.

Grooming will be done as needed on the Lovells Trail and on the recently talked about trail segments starting just south of Frederic, first time I got the spelling correct on Frederico all season.

Currently we have the Price group of 10 Gentlemen in and they are riding on and off trail in the Lovells and range areas and are reporting a great ride.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Walter Cronkite and Rita Hayworth reporting

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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January 29, 2015 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/27

Greetings Part Time Sledders,

I spent a couple of hours driving around the country side on this beautiful day with not a cloud to be seen and the Sun set on blaze, checking on what’s left, and everything is pretty much as described in the last report. The Sun didn’t hurt anything as it was only in the teens and snowmobile traffic is understandably an unknown weekday commodity this Winter and I use the word Winter loosely. The good thing about the Sun being so intense is that you get some reflection off the beer and pop cans along the ditch line which makes hunting a lot easier. Spam I’m afraid is a luxury of the past.

For those of you who didn’t read last week’s report, and for those of you that did and don’t remember, we currently have one trail that’s intact and that would be the Lovells trail #47, intact defined is the straights are in good shape and the corners are for sure showing some dirt. The good thing about this trail is that it offers a ton of off trail riding and you can still get into Lovells for food and gas, and Lewiston Grade Rd. behind us will get you there and is still in good shape as of this writing.

All of the other Grayling Trails starting one mile South of Frederic remain snirty, dirty, and just plain ugly. Getting to decent snow on trail #7 from here is do-able but entails some cross country adventures and I’m not sure where you would go once you get there on account ah, we don’t know anything about any of the trails north of our stuff, so you’ll have to contact someone in them there parts.

Snow is in the forecast, unfortunately it doesn’t look like much and that’s certainly a first for this season. Oh well, about all we can do is keep a sharp eye out for more cans. Got two bucks today.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls.

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

January 27, 2015 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/20

Greetings Sledders,

Not much to write about other than tell you what trail is intact and what trails are partially intact. The Lovells trail #47 is still alive mainly due to light weekend traffic and of course all of the assorted off trail riding that accompanies this segment remains good as well.

As for the rest of the Grayling trails:

If you were to draw an east west line one mile south of Frederic you would be looking at the Great Divide. Everything north of that line is relatively good snow and everything south would be your garden variety dirt and snirt.

Are they still grooming you ask? I’m glad you brought that up Kathy. Yes we are, although we have to drive over the road six miles to get to groom-able snow. A first for us.

When do you expect things will get back to abnormal and you’ll get some snow? Fair question Bruce. Fact is there’s no snow predicted in the 5-10 day forecast except for a clipper that’s supposed to hit Hawaii. So please don’t ask us anymore Bruce, we’ll get to you when things perk up. And remember, we are clueless when it comes to knowing conditions elsewhere.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and the Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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January 20, 2015 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/14

Greetings Sledders

Dagnabit, I thought for awhile last weekend that winter was upon us and replenishing snows would be plentiful, temps would behave and the like, and we could glide worry free for a few weeks. But nooooo that’s not the case. There’s no real snow in the foreseeable and the temps are going to go a little crazy over the weekend there.

So here’s the deal for the Grayling trails to the best of my knowledge and predictions and so on.

Right now the trails look to be pretty good and stiff, (after a night of 22 below everything is stiff or turtle shelled but that’s another story all together), with a few inches of actual base left. This will no doubt change as the weekend progresses as there’s no snow coming and not much that groomers can do with so little to work with. So I’m afraid that by Saturday afternoon the conditions will likely be pretty darn poor.

There’s plenty of snow on the ground and the off-trail riding would be a good option with tons of two-tracks and the like available to play in and on. So then, sorry about the dismal outlook for Grayling there, but it is what it is and we just haven’t gotten the repeat snow fall events to build a base that will withstand this weekend’s traffic and temps you see.

I’m thinkin’ that the Mrs. and I will lay back, get some snacks and watch that last Fargo disc and call er’ good enough.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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January 14, 2015 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/07

Greetings Sledders

My how quickly things change. Early season reporting and groomer decision making can be tricky to say the least as a few inches of overnight snow can make a difference. We got about 3-4′ in town last night with more to the West and the forecast is now calling for more tomorrow night as a clipper swings through.

We are back in the base building business and I’m up grading the trails to fair to good. Remember our trails run about 35 miles from North to South and conditions can change along that distance but all in all I think that this weekend will be alright as a start to the year.

Sorry for the sudden change in reporting but that’s he way it goes early in the season.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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January 7, 2015 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/06

Greetings Eager Sledders,

We got a whopping 4′ out of the weekend system that went through and an additional mind boggling 2′ of LES Sunday night, which triggered two expeditionary panning runs on Monday, one to Fredericanville and one to Lovells. First of the season panning runs are a necessary evil and both turned out to be productive. The decision to go was based on the forecast and what’s on the ground, what’s on the ground didn’t change much, but the forecast sure took a left turn as far as snow goes. If we don’t get additional inches out of the Lake Effect Guns, which doesn’t look good for us as most of that snow has missed us to the North, unfortunately, we are going to be stuck in the Poor to Fair rating for awhile.

Wish we had better news to report, but as we say ‘ it is what it is ‘ , and there’s not much we can do but have another one. Grilled Spam sandwich that is.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

January 6, 2015 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 12/30

Greetings Would Be Anxious Sledder Types,

Once again we’ve lost the most sought after week of sledding due to the most bizarre behaving Mother Nature that we’ve seen in at least the last decade. Consistent Winters are simply not her forte’. There is reason for hope, however, as the temps are supposed to stay solid, a couple of clippers are scheduled, and the Lake Effect Snow guns are supposed to kick into gear in the not too distant future, this according to our beloved, and trusted Johndee.com. How much we get out of the clippers and LES is anybody’s guess and these types of snows are unpredictable, but hey, it’s a positive forecast. Seeing a forecast with clippers in it is encouraging. Some of the best winters are ones that have clippers stacked up, which gives us a steady diet of a few inches every few days.

Oh Yeah, welcome to all of you newcomers that signed up for this report. Welcome back to all of you seasoned veterans that have been reading this thing over the years. Can’t believe this is the beginning of the fifteenth season of this sometimes nonsensical, often digressive, always honest, and accurate report. We are Keith and Sandy, owners of Fay’s Motel, I manage the trails in and around Grayling and have been setting in the groomer driver’s seat for 14 years, together we can provide you with up to date trail conditions. That’s the last sales pitch you’ll read this season, I promise.

There is reason to be upbeat about the weather forecast and I’ll not get into the details that most of you have probably already seen.

Stay tuned for an update as soon as we get significant snowfall on the horizon and/or more importantly on the ground.

Have a safe and Happy New Year.

When the time gets here, and it eventually will,
Ride Often And Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls.

December 30, 2014 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 03/19

Greetings Sledders,

That’s a wrap, game over, season 14′s finale’ report, what the hell do you want to talk about now?

I’ll just throw some numbers at you in terms of what we groomed and monies and time we spent to get there and call it a season, how’s that?

We are responsible for 86 miles of trail and on that 86 we groomed 6,942 miles, and to accomplish that we put butts in the seats for 1,193 hours which equates to a robust 5.8 miles per hour.

Our very thirsty John Deere 7830 tractors consumed the better part of our $26,000.00 fuel bill this past season which put our cost to groom each mile at approximately $3.74, and that’s just fuel. It doesn’t take into account several thousands of dollars spent on non-reimbursable items such as oils, hoses, lights, etc.

One should not lose sight of the pre-season hours spent brushing, signing, grading, and machine maintenance when putting the final tally on this year, we had about 550 hours associated with those functions as well and it’s far from over. We now enter into post season shut down which includes dropping the blades off the Deere’s, removing and re-building all of the cylinder and rod ends, dropping all three drags and flipping the cutters for next year, final greasing for the year and the list goes on and on.

In closing, thanks to all of you who read and responded to the reports this year and a huge thank you to all who stayed with us during a year where you could go pretty much anywhere in the State, your business is genuinely appreciated.

Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

March 19, 2014 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 03/11

Greetings Sledders,

I’m sure that many of you are wondering if we have anything left for the final hoorah this coming weekend and the answer to that is yes although the conditions aren’t quite what we had during weekends past.

Yesterday the high in the sky March Sun was on full blast with virtually no cloud cover to be seen and it did take a toll, not a death blow but definitely a toll on the trails and especially on all of the County roads that connect the various trail segments. A good example of that is Lewiston Grade behind us which is shot, however you can trailer to the parking lot and ride all day on and off the trail but you can’t get to Lovells to get gas and food without enduring a bunch of bare roads.

Bottom-line is I’m calling the trails fair, there’s still snow on most of each segment, but you will see stretches that were once snirt that now are probably dirt. A ride able situation but far from the Good to Very Good status we had just a week or so ago.

In looking at the long range weather forecast it would seem that this deal is about to come to another close which I will do next Tuesday.

If you do come up plan on having to feel your way around here and there and I believe that it’s doable just not what we’ve been accustomed to this year.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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March 11, 2014 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 03/05

Greetings Sledders,

March is upon us and it looks like we will finally get some moderation in the temps starting this weekend although it’s hard to imagine that as we had another night of 21 below last night, what a brutal winter it’s been.

Our grooming schedule will remain pretty much the same as it has been except that we will throw an extra run on a couple of segments to bring in the reserves on the sides.

Right now the trails remain in good to very good condition and I don’t see the rise in this weekend’s temps as doing us any real harm. I would throw out this caution however, the March high in the sky Sun is supposed to be in and out over the next week and is something to keep an eye on. The good news about that is traffic will be down especially during the week which will allow the trails to absorb a bunch of those nasty rays without too much damage.

Next report will be mid next week.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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March 5, 2014 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/26

Greetings Sledders,

Real quick update, the trails haven’t changed since last report other than we’ve picked up a little snow over the weekend to freshen things up a bit. I’m rating the trail system as a whole at good to very good.

Please use caution in the corners as the ice deal is still with us, and blade as we will there’s not much we can do with this moisture-less snow except to keep putting it back on the inside radius.

We will be grooming on as close a schedule as normal although we are down three drivers for the weekend, yours truly included, actually I’m out for a week, and the remaining guys will do their best to keep up. Generally speaking it’s about this weekend where traffic begins to fall off significantly so I think the guys will do just fine in maintaining good trails.

The next report will be early next week which will be based on info gathered from the active drivers and will no doubt be accurate.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

February 26, 2014 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/19

Greetings Sledders,

Well now it would seem that we have some weather to talk about and it could lead to some pretty ugly trail conditions,or,depending on what happens Thursday we could actually be OK. Why don’t you go ahead and pick one, ugly or OK, cause I honestly don’t know at this point. And we probably won’t know for sure until Friday morning at the earliest.

John Dee has us painted in the mod. to heavy rain area while the local weather folks are being fairly shy about specifics with this thing so we can’t say one way or the other in terms of this weekend’s conditions.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Wilhelm clan has been here since last weekend, and when I say clan I do mean clan. Marv, and Merv and the kids and grand-kids have been having a blast on the trails and have had great sledding conditions. Hope you guys had fun.

Currently the trails are for the most part good, I use most part because I’m sure there are some spots that were snirty that got clipped by the Sun yesterday and today.

Look for an update sometime Friday morning and hopefully we’ll have a better handle on things for the weekend.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

February 19, 2014 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/12

Greetings Sledders,

There’s still not much to talk about with regard to the trails. We continue to work the snow that we’ve been working for it seems like weeks now and it’s still holding up pretty good. We could use some moisture to get the snow to stay where we put it but you can’t have everything, can you?

The system as a whole is in good to very good shape. Please watch out for icy corners and traffic this weekend will likely be heavy due to President’s Day for whatever that’s worth.

Time is running short and I have to go, the day started out with pulling routine maintenance on both Deeres, then groomed Lovells and now I’m off to a scheduling meeting.

Next report probably the end of this week,

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

February 12, 2014 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/04

Greetings Sledders,

There’s still not much to talk about in terms of trail conditions, we are continuing to see very good trails and are hearing nice things about our grooming efforts, which is always passed on to our guys.

It would seem that once again you downstate and out-of-state folks are going see the snows from the next three systems that are heading across the nation’s mid-section and that’s okay we have plenty to work with on the trails and off trail looks like it would be a blast, although I can’t attest to that as I’ve been on my sled once all year. Hopefully that will change soon.

The only thing to caution you about are some of the corners, some are icy after last weekend’s traffic had it’s way with them and broke up the base that was established. We’ve bladed all the corners back in but there is a lack of moisture in the snow so some of them won’t set up the way we’d like. Please use some caution.

Temps look to stay well below freezing all week so we won’t lose anything for the foreseeable.

Next report will probably be next week unless something changes drastically.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

February 4, 2014 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/29

Greetings Sledders,

Well, there’s not much to talk about, the trails are very good, we have more than enough snow to work with as far as grooming goes, temps are forecast to come up to at least a tolerable level but nowhere near the thaw mark, more snow is in the forecast as well, life is good, so come on up and enjoy.

I think that about sums it all up and my brain is a tad numb from being outside during a groomer breakdown today, so thinking of something profound to add on is pretty much out of the question.

The next report will likely be next week as there aren’t any major negative weather events in the long range forecast.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,

Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

January 29, 2014 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/22

Greetings Sledders,

Everyone that was here last weekend reported good to very good rides and there were a few awesomes thrown in for good measure.

We did have a groomer sled incident that wasn’t a biggie, but reportable just the same. Sunday afternoon, early evening, one of our John Deere drivers was approaching a corner and could see through the trees that a sled was coming from the other direction so the driver stopped and alas the sledded didn’t until he looked up and saw this big green thing blocking the trail, brakes were applied to the sled in a large way, and as we all know sleds don’t stop on a straight line, sideways and over he went. Fortunately there wasn’t any bodily harm to the sledder, but from what I understand the sled didn’t fare as well. Please slow down on the corners and hills folks.

GROOMING:

We will start the groomers back up on Friday when traffic picks back up. Right now the trails are flat, white and tight and there’s no amount of grooming that will make them flatter, whiter, or tighter. So why, I ask you, why, would we go out and waste your trail permit dollars by grooming when it’s not necessary.

RIDING THIS WEEK AND WEEKEND:

Riding this week will probably be a lonely affair, (although I’m not sure how having an affair could be lonely), due to the frigid temps we are once again experiencing, it was -22 this morning.

Riding this week and weekend should be good, to dare I say it, very good. We definitely won’t lose any snow this week with temps to be no greater than the teens and there is some snow in the forecast due in here long about Fridayish to freshen things up.

We’ll update should things change, or perhaps one of us will get bored and decide to update for the hell of it.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,

Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

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January 22, 2014 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/15

Sledders,

Just a real quick update this morning.

What a difference a day makes! The snow we were waiting on came. Yeah! We got 5-6 inches last night with more predicted tonight and tomorrow.

Groomers will go out later to pan.

Will update later today.

Sandy & Keith

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

January 15, 2014 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 01/07

Greetings Sledders,

I’m back and frankly I’m happy to be vertical as opposed to forever horizontal and carrying on extended conversations with relatives who have long since left this world as we know and love it.
My Sandy did a masterful job of understating my condition as I requested, fact is I spent a week in Munson Med Center with Dbl Pneumonia, three days of which were in ICU. Doctors there told me that waiting another couple of hours could have been the kicker, literally. There’s a lot of this junk going around and please take my advice, don’t take it lightly.

ENOUGH ON THAT, LET’S TALK TRAILS:

We need snow to freshen things up plain and simple. Unfortunately there isn’t anything in the forecast, except for the occasional shot of LES which we of course will take without pause.
That doesn’t mean that we’re out of the game as we are continuing to Groom on our regular schedule and for the most part trail conditions are Fair to Good, mostly Good.
The Fair part of the equation is primarily limited to Trail 7 which is the Frederic trail, the most traveled of all of our segments and it’s pretty snirty until you get just south of Frederic and it then gets whiter the further North and Northwest you go.

THIS WEEKEND:

While the weekend is a long way out I think that we have a good shot at getting through it relatively unscathed. Friday’s forecast is calling for 34 degrees but cloudy skies and Saturday is supposed to be 36 with a 60% chance of snow. Again it’s a long way out but the current info suggests that we should be Okay.

One last note on this report, I’d like to thank our guys for standing in and taking the reins while I re-coup which could be another 3-4 weeks. In the mean time I’ve been told to set down, shut up and do the paperwork that everyone else hates to do.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

January 7, 2014 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 12/30

12/30 Snowmobile trails are being groomed as scheduled and are in fair to good shape with some snirt. Weather forecast is for slight chance of snow with very, very cold temperatures the remainder of the week. Happy New Year!

12/27 Hello Sledders,

Just a quick update for the rest of this weekend and early next week from the non-grooming part of this team. The grooming part is totally under the weather.

Had a report from the rest of the grooming crew. Trails are being groomed as scheduled and are in good shape.

Temps will warm into the mid 30′s tomorrow. Skies are to be cloudy. The warmer temps will not harm the trails any. A little moisture will do some good. Temps will drop off Sunday through next week with snow here and there.

Ride often and please be safe,

Sandy & Keith

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

December 30, 2013 |

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 12/15

Greetings Sledders,

Good News!!!! We are panning the trails and it’s only ‘freikin’ December, that doesn’t happen every year now does it?

We don’t have nearly the snowfall that others in the North and Northwest of us have but we got enough Sat. night to push me to pull the trigger and get the base building process underway.

ALL RIGHT LET’S GET THIS THING GOING:

WEATHER:
There’s nothing alarming in the forecast in terms of the dreaded warm-ups and there’s some good news, there’s snow in the equation and most of that is LES which can plant itself anywhere, and we’ll be happy with what we get.

TRAIL CONDITIONS:
It’s early season riding and I’m thinking that for the most part our trails are going to end up with about 2′ of base at the end of the panning excursive Monday afternoon. That sentence translates to poor to fair for those of you that aren’t familiar with my reporting. My reasoning behind that statement is that we are dealing with LES which, as I’ve said nineteen million times before, it has no moisture content and therefore won’t stay where we put it. However, base building is a long drawn out process and overall we are happy to be in a position to have a shot at having enough snow on the trails and in the woods to afford all of you an opportunity to enjoy the Holiday season up here on your sleds.

Ride Often And Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

December 15, 2013 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 12/10

Greetings to all of you anxious Sledders,

I know, I know, I’m late at getting this, the 14th year of this gig started and I don’t have any excuses other than I’m genuinely lazy and possess all of the characteristics of your most reviled, get nothing done, politician except for the fact that I am honest, especially when it comes to this report. I can’t get myself all lathered up on politics because in the lodging business one never talks politics or religion as you’re certain to tick someone off and that’s not a good deal for anyone.

To all of you that are new to this report I will offer up an intro, to those of you that are veteran readers you can either go watch TV for a minute or of course scroll down to the section that interests you the most, it’s kind of a written musical interlude if you will. I’m sure that there are six or eight that get my weird sense of humor in that sentence.

We are Keith and Sandy and The Girls and we own Fay’s Motel in Grayling, the Girls don’t actually own the Motel as they are our bird dogs, anyway, I groom trails and have been doing so for 13 years and I’ve been producing this thing for that many years as well. We pride ourselves in disseminating honest reports, whether that be online or over the phone. Our motto is ‘ a lie today will get you a short term financial gain followed by a long term loss ‘ and we stick by that rule when reporting.
Okay all you veterans you can now come back to the report.

ALL RIGHT LET’S GET ON WITH IT SHALL WE:

CURRENT SNOW CONDITIONS:
We only have about 4 or so inches on the ground and that’s about 4′ short of what we need to get the groomers cranked up and running. The main reason for this amount of snow being less than what we need to get moving is that it’s Lake Effect Snow or LES, a term that will be used many times in future reports. LES has no MOISTURE in it and it’s only real attribute in small portions is that it’s WHITE, it is not a base building snow by any means, but if you get enough of it in a dumping it becomes much better than nothing.

BASE:
I realize that this report is lengthy and the first one of the year always is, but bear with me it’ll be over soon. The term ‘base’ is probably the least understood term in reporting. That of course is my humble opinion after doing this for a week or 156, I think that’s what 13 years times 12 weeks per season works out to be. Base to me is what your carbides are riding on and that’s what we report. If you have 5′ of fluff your carbides are pretty much riding on dirt. Conversely if you have 5′ of system snow and we compress that with the drag you might end up with 1′ or 2′ of snow that is the start of your base. We don’t get 5′ of system snow and somehow miraculously end up with 5′ of base, doesn’t work that way.

CURRENT TRAIL CONDITIONS:
I’m going with not recommended at this time with no real base due to not enough snow to get us started. There is snow in the forecast and it is LES which means that it’s anybody’s guess as to who gets what.

I promise the next report will be shorter and it will also be produced when we get enough snow to get the groomers fired up.

Until then,

Ride often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

December 10, 2013 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 03/20

Greetings Sledders,

Lake Effect snows have been coming and going for the last couple of days and it’s difficult to say exactly how much we got and I’m comfortable with 5" on average. I took a road trip to check the crossings and everything looks good. If you do come up be aware that we are supposed to have temps flirting with the 40 degree mark starting Saturday and continuing for the foreseeable so things could be winding down.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,

Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

March 20, 2013 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 03/08

Greetings Sledders,

This will be the last report for this year provided we don’t get a huge storm before the season is officially over. Hope the report helped you in making your sledding decisions.

We have been pretty non-committal on the phone with people asking our opinion and this is by design because we just don’t know when the trails will breakdown as it is on a day to day status this weekend.

We do know that as of this morning the trails were holding their own however we currently have a cloudless sky and the direct sunshine is taking it’s toll. More of the same is on tap for tomorrow with even higher temps followed by rain Sat. night and into Sunday.

Right now I’m rating the trails as fair and that is keeping the weather in mind.

Good luck if you do come up and thanks for a great season.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

March 8, 2013 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 03/04

Greetings Sledders,

I guess the best advice we can give you at this point in time is ride em’ if you got em’ and do it soon.

Everything is groomed flat in anticipation of Sun week and the groomers will be parked for the foreseeable. The trails are in good to better than that right now but it won’t take too many days of this intense Sunshine before they start going south on us.

Due to very light traffic I believe that things will hold together until the end of the week but once traffic increases and that coincides with the temperature increase on Fri, Sat, and Sun it won’t take long for conditions to start sliding off quickly.

The final report will be coming when the last nail is about to be hammered into the coffin, until then,

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

March 4, 2013 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/28

Greetings Sledders,

Everyone that stayed with us through the week reported exceptional rides pretty much wherever they journeyed to. Based on this feedback and on the fact that we did get a couple of inches of snow the last few days I’m calling the trails good.

The good news weather wise is that the temps are going to be in the lower 20′s during the weekend days and drop down to single digits at night.

So it looks like we’ll get another weekend in. The groomers will be on our regular weekend schedule starting Friday.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

February 28, 2013 | Uncategorized

Grayling Trail Report – Fay’s Motel – 02/26

Greetings Sledders,

Once again I needed to wait on the forecast before posting and I believe that we now have a better idea as to what to expect this weekend. We are getting to that point in the year where trail reporting can be very dicey because of the high in the sky sun and all it takes is one full day of exposure to that sun and conditions can change dramatically. After watching the local forecast and bouncing that off Weather Underground " I feel more like I do now than I did a little while ago " and can say that it looks like on the surface that we’ll be okay this weekend. One always takes the risk of being right and not hearing any feedback and being wrong and experiencing an electronic lynching and I certainly hope this turns out to be right.

Trail conditions:
I’m backing down one notch on the rating range because we saw a pretty good amount of sunshine on Sunday and warm temps yesterday that has given us some limited snirty areas on the Southern and Eastern segments of the trails. Not extreme by any means but snirt doesn’t warrant a good rating from this reporter. I’m putting the range at fair to good.

Weather:
The weather wizards are calling for a few inches out of the system that is slamming everyone to the South of us which is okay as long as the temps behave, the sun doesn’t get to us and the night time temps go to the teens as predicted. Again it’s that time of year and if the sun gets intense things can change. Please don’t lynch me if I’m wrong.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and He Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

February 26, 2013 | Uncategorized
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