St. Ignace Trail Report – Straits Area Snowmobile Club – 01/02
Hope all of you had a save and happy holiday with family and friends!
Looks like we ended up having a mini-hell week here in the EUP. I had a bunch of reports from all over that there were tons of sleds on the trails all week long. Business are reporting a solid pickup in traffic from last year (not hard to beat though).
Overall our trails are in good shape, with no major problems to report. You have to remember that we are STILL running on ONE STORMs worth of snow, and it is defiantly getting wore out. There is still enough to groom out there, but the snow is turning to a dryer surgery type and it isn’t holding a groom very long. Trout Lake got away from us a bit over the weekend, and was pretty chopped up, I sent Bobby up as soon as I heard about it and he got things fixed up. The RR Grade has some thin spots, mostly in the open areas as usual, and some rocks are poking through from the base, as there still isn’t any ice under there yet. All of our water holes are frozen and good to go. Burma grade is all groomed up and is the typical 25′ wide highway.
We have everything cleaned up now, trees are still loaded from that storm, and you have to be on the lookout for fallen trees mostly within 15 miles of Iggy. We have not had any issues over the last 4 days, but since the trees are still loaded without a warm up in the forecast they are going to stay that way, and any new snow will just make the problem worse.
Connecting trail info: I have seen sled tracks from the Cedarville connector, but I don’t believe that they are groomed up yet – still too much open water. We will touch up our connector only once a week until they are operating. The TASA trail from Rexton to Trout Lake is still in bad shape (usually until Mid Jan or Feb) Drop down to our Caffey trail for a much faster and better ride.
Bottom line, is trails are in good shape, but still thin, everybody still needs more snow. Our forecast is to have light snow today, and get some accumulation tomorrow. Calling for 2′-4′ total over the next 48 hours which will help some. We are in a delicate balancing act right now of running the groomers to keep the trail in good condition, yet not so much as to damage the trail. Until we get more workable snow, please be understanding if you find a choppy section of trail – we will keep it up the best we can. Groomers will run at least every 3 days, or more when needed.
I expect this coming weekend to be busy, so ride safe and enjoy. You are always welcome to post up pics and stories of riding in the area.