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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Greetings Sledders,

Real quick report.

We’ve had several riders in for most of the week and they all are elated about the condition of the trails here in Grayling.

Troy and his guys got off trail in the Air to Ground range area today and even had a free air show put on by the A-10′s from Selfridge, always a treat.

There is some snow in the forecast for the weekend, not a ton but a few inches here and there always helps to keep things fresh.

I’m going with Good to very Good conditions and it looks like traffic won’t be as great a volume as last 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.

Greetings Sledders,

I wanted to wait on this until we were a little more certain about what the weather was going to do. We use basically three weather sources and all were conflicting yesterday and with my luck I’d pick one and be wrong so it’s better to wait a day.

We had a full house over the weekend and everyone reported great rides on our system with many compliments about our grooming efforts.

Last week we had a visit from longtime friends and readers of this deal, Robin and DJ stopped and my buddy DJ was impressed with the trails enough that he left me a surprise tip in my truck. Not necessary DJ but greatly appreciated.

All righty then let’s get to it.

We did get some light rain last night and it is now turning to snow and once again there are conflicting forecasts in terms of how much. One source says the possibility of 8" and the others are calling for more in the 3-4" range. It doesn’t look like it matters too much either way as the trails that I checked this morning remain white with a thin crust on top which will work it’s way out with sled and groomer traffic. As traffic volume increases when we approach the weekend and the corners become bermed watch for ice on the insides of some of them.

Grooming is down Today and tomorrow because we groomed everything flat and bladed in all the corners Sunday and yesterday and we feel that more grooming on these two days is a waste of fuel and your trail permit dollars as long as low traffic volumes remain what they are right now.

I’m rating the trails as Good and will probably throw in the Very Good part on Thursday’s report.

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

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

Greetings Sledders,

It’s been said thousands of times that timing is everything and that holds true in weather events.We did get some rain Sunday night and early Monday before it changed over to snow. The timing aspect is that the rain took place after the sled traffic left, had the same event taken place on Friday it would have meant show’s over. In this case the rain is actually a plus as it added some moisture to the existing snow cover and will help build on an already good base now that the temps are back below the freeze mark.

The even better news is that more snow is in the forecast for Thursday and Friday, not major quantities but 3-4" to keep everything freshened up.

We had no choice but to curtail grooming on Sunday night and Monday but we are back at it 100% and I see nothing to alter the schedule at this time.

I’m rating the trails as good to very good again in this report but I find it necessary to tell everyone that this is President’s Day weekend and we anticipate a high volume of traffic. We will do our very best to keep up.

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

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

Greetings Sledders,

Very simply put these are the best conditions that we’ve seen in a long ,long ,time. Before yesterday’s 3" we had plenty of snow to work with in terms of grooming and it looks as though we are in for another 5" or so tonight which is frosting on the cake.

For those of you who have read me over the years you know that I rarely use terms like "very good" and " awesome" when translating trail conditions to you and I avoid those terms because I think that the more you use them freely the less meaningful they become. The trails must be groomed and the base must be established before those terms can be applied and I do believe that we are at a "good" to "very good" status right now, and the really good news is that there doesn’t look to be a meltdown or other ailments in our immediate future.

Now’s the time to ride.

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

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

Greetings Sledders,

I’m pleased to report that almost everyone that we talked to reported great rides over the weekend. The exception to that greatness part had nothing to do with trail conditions but was a function of four of our regular guests attempting to re-enact the recent I-75 chain reaction pile-up with their sleds and it didn’t work out so pretty good. Come on guys slow down a tad.

The last several days of Lake Effect coupled with yesterday’s 3" or so along with what’s in the forecast should make for good sledding all week and Thursday’s forecast looks like it will easily carry us through the weekend, at least as of right now.

We are grooming and have plenty to work with although the base is not as solid as I’d like to see but then again I’m a groomer junkie and very hard to please.

Overall rating is good.

Next report Wed-Thurs evening.

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

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

Greetings Sledders,

Very quick update. We received a surprising 10+ inches today and more is in the forecast.

That said I’m going to upgrade conditions to good with the caveat that the base issues will be there but won’t pop up immediately and hopefully grooming efforts will make them a non-issue, although I don’t see us totally avoiding the water holes with these rigs, so a few spots will likely be ugly.

Grooming will resume Fri. and continue on a regular schedule until Mother Nature decides to have her way with us once again.

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

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

Greetings Sledders,

Had to wait for something to happen weather wise before posting this.

Finally changed over to snow sometime last night and as of this morning we have 3-4" of fluffy Lake Effect on the ground with predictions of 4" today and 7" tonight. Two things to keep in mind about this news, one is that it is based on predictions regarding LE and two it is fluffy and doesn’t bare much in the way of cushion between you and what’s left of the base.

Base is the next issue. Took a couple of road trips yesterday to check out the crossings and saw a mixed bag of conditions ranging from short bare spots to slushy stretches and numerous water holes. The bare spots will heal provided we get what is forecast. The wet areas and holes will take some time even as temps continue to drop.

If we get the snow predicted I would rate the trails at no better than fair due to the base issues but things should continue to improve as time goes on.

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

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

Greetings Sledders,

Yes I’m still alive although it feels like just barely, do everything you can to avoid this flu bug as she is natty.

Everyone that we talked to over the weekend reported better that expected trail conditions which of course is what we like to hear.

On to the here and now and what to expect this week. The here and now is simple, we got around 5-6" of heavy wet snow last night which is being panned and lightly cut today and tonight and I would rate the overall conditions as good. I bet some of you were looking to see a great rating, not a chance, got a ways to go for that to happen.

Here’s the tricky part. There is rain in the forecast for tomorrow and early Wed. followed by a plummet in temps. This has a potential of being really good or really bad depending on the amount of rain. I’m not worried about the high temps because of the intense cloud cover along with very little sled traffic. So we could end up with a very nice solid base or we could end up back on the couch with the girls recuperating from the flu. Won’t know for sure until Wed sometime and we will update 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.

Greetings Sledders,

It would appear that the LE snows are winding down in this area. It’s hard to put an exact number of inches received due to the blowing and compacting but I think around 8" is fairly accurate.

Right now the trails would land in the fair to good category, with the weekend being the toughest to predict at this point not knowing what traffic will be like and not knowing what replenishing snows we will see. It’s safe to say that what we have on the trails will be put to the test.

We haven’t panned this fluffy snow yet,the trails were wet under the snow and I decided to let the light sled traffic pack it in and anticipate resuming the actual grooming schedule this weekend.

We will update closer to the weekend if conditions change.

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

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

Greetings Would-be Sledders,

As you know we are in start over mode after losing all of our base during the thaw.

So far we have picked up a couple of inches of LES which is far from enough to fire up grooming equipment and Lake Effective is not good base building material, but of course we’ll take whatever we can get at this juncture. That said the trails are in pretty poor shape until we get something to work with.

More snow is in the forecast with a mix of clippers and LES over the next 7 to 10 days. Along with that prediction is a wide range of just how much to expect and where the snows will fall. Most predictions are for the snow amounts that will start today and become greater tomorrow to be in the 4-7" range by the end of the weekend. Keep in mind these are forecasts.

The last paragraph is not to be construed as a green light saying come on up and this time bring your sleds because it’s based on the same weather forecasts that we all look at. We are confident that we’ll get snow and that confidence stems from all weather sources calling for like results. We just don’t know how much.

Basically it’s your call on taking the chance.

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

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

Greetings Sledders,

Come on up, but our advice to you is to leave your sleds at home. The game is pretty much over for the time being.

It truly is disappointing after battling the brush war that Mother Nature gave us along with the ride able snow that she can so quickly take the snow away. She can be brutal indeed.

It’s difficult to say when we’ll get back into the game based on the long term forecasts, but rest assured we will get a report out when something positive is on the horizon. Griff, this is all your fault!!!

Let the fat lady sing once again.

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

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