CPSC Riding 010910

Chute Pond Snowmobile Club

Riding with Dan & Dylan, Weekend of January 9, 2010

Friday, January 8, 2010. Temperature was 17 degrees at 3:30 pm, sunny skies.

We arrived a little later than usual today because of a big snow storm in the Milwaukee area. We dug ourselves out from about a foot of snow and headed north. By the time we got to Bonduel, there was only about 4" of snow, and when we pulled in our driveway at the Pond, we were disappointed to find only about an inch of fresh powder. Not fair. We could have used that big snow.

We're still on the backup sleds- me on the Pantera 800 triple gas guzzler, and Dylan on the Bullpen Puma. When Dylan checked the ice, we found about a foot of ice in Bonita Bay. At about 3:30 pm, we headed off the lake at the end of Bonita Creek, and went south on the 7S RR grade. The trail was flat, smooth, and white as we headed south to Rhode's Oasis in Breed to fuel up. We continued south on the grade, and when we crossed Hwy 32, things changed for the worse. The trail became very thin, snirty, and gravelly for most of the way to Suring. There's just not much snow to work with on this stretch. I won't ride it again until it snows more and covers up the brown and gravel. We cut through Suring to the Bag & Bra trails, and headed north. The cornfield trails were even thinner than the RR grade- icy, brown, and rough. Several deep ditches and gullies in the fields almost threw us off our sleds when we went through them. We fought our way north, and met a detour because of standing corn in a field. The detour took us along a fully plowed road with no snow for a 1/4 mile, before we finally turned west and headed for the Pipeline trail. I won't ride this trail again until it snows, either. Maybe not even then- this trail was really bad.

We headed north on the Bag & Bra Pipeline trail, which was white and reasonably smooth. We turned west into Chute Pond trails, and enjoyed a nice ride through the woods on smooth, flat white trails as we rode the trail north towards Crooked Lake. Our honeymoon ended once we turned off of Swamp Rd onto the actual Pipeline again. This trail has not been groomed because of the LMC tracked groomer breaking through the ice in the low spots. The trail was extremely rough and treacherous, and caused us great misery as we trudged slowly to Crooked Lake. About halfway there, Dylan said to me on the Chatterbox "I guess we should have taken the website trail report's advice and avoided this trail". I couldn't have agreed more. Unless you're a glutton for punishment, don't ride this trail until our trail report advises to do so. It's brutal. We finally made it to the intersection with the Highline trail, and turned east into Iron Snowshoe trails. We were disappointed to find that the Highline trail was no better groomed than the Pipeline, but things improved when we turned northwest onto the Iron Snowshoe "F" trail and headed towards Crooked Lake. We headed up to the "Lake Shortcut to the Pines" and took that across Crooked Lake. The route is marked with barrels and is flat and smooth. We stopped in for a visit with Tim & Jackie at Randall's Resort, and talked about the trail situation. We explained about the Pipeline, and also told them about the truck ruts frozen into the 18 trail between Chute Pond and Crooked Lake. Hopefully soon both of those trails will get smoothed out.

Webmaster's Note: Grooming on the Pipeline trail began Monday, January 11th. Conditions are improving, but please- still use extra caution when riding this trail.

When we left Randall's, we headed back across the lake and north on the "F" trail. This trail was flat, smooth, and white as we worked our way through the woods. Normally this is one of the roughest rides we find, but today it was top notch. We turned west towards Lakewood into Paul Bunyan trails, and to our great surprise, things got even better. I would rate these trails as very good to excellent- the best PB trails I have ever ridden- as we worked our way west into Lakewood. We gave the two PB groomer drivers a heartfelt "thumbs up" as we rode past them at the garage as they were getting ready to go out for the night. We fueled up again (still only getting 7-8 mpg on the Guzzler) at the BP in Lakewood, and headed south on a flat and smooth RR grade. We turned west at the Maiden Lake trail, then headed south onto the Mountain Lakes trail. This stretch of trail was in very good shape- freshly groomed and flat. We came back into Chute Pond trails south of Halfway Bar, and found an immediate downgrade from the PB trails. The trails were fair to good- a little rough and bumpy as we headed south to Four Corners, then south to Pine Grove. The groomers did smooth out the trail somewhat heading south into Pine Grove this week, but it still needs more work. We stopped in for a visit with Rocky & Sally at Pine Grove, and talked about the trails, Rocky's new web cam on the trail, and the upcoming Trailside Cookout. Sally tried to fatten us up with some homemade candy, which Dylan seemed to enjoy.

From Pine Grove, we headed south and east to the tunnel trail, then to 2112 and the RR grade back to Chute Pond via Bonita Creek. The trail was perfectly groomed- flat and smooth for our trip home. We rode 86 miles today. Here are our trail ratings:

Chute Pond trails fair to good (excluding the Pipeline), Bag & Bra trails poor to fair, Iron Snowshoe trails fair to very good, and Paul Bunyan trails very good to excellent. Sorry, no pictures today- it got dark too fast. I'll try to get some tomorrow.

We have our CPSC meeting Saturday 11:00 am at Vollmar's Trailside in Suring, followed by a chili dump. We won't be riding our sleds down there (did I just say that?) because of the trail conditions. We plan to ride west and north after the meeting.

Saturday, January 9, 2010. Temperature was 15 degrees at 2:30 pm.

We had our club meeting and Chili Dump this morning, and planned a small group afternoon ride. We rode with Nelson & Susan, Ken, Julie, Collin, and Laken. We left Chute Pond off Bonita Creek and headed south on the RR grade. We turned west on 2112, and took that to the tunnel trail past Pine Grove. The tunnel was flat and smooth but starting to show some gravel in spots. We crossed Hwy W and wound through the woods to the "Big Y". The wooded trail was pretty rough, but things smoothed out as we took the Mountain Lakes trail from 4 Corners and headed north. We made a pit stop at O'Neil's Halfway Bar. When we left Laken had a little crash, and got a bloody nose. Once that was taken care of, we crossed Hwy 32 and headed north on the RR grade to the BP in Lakewood for fuel. The grade was in good shape, as were the Paul Bunyan wooded trails as we made a loop east before coming back west to the RR grade again. We headed south to the Maiden Lake trail, which we took south to Halfway Bar. These trails were all in nice shape, especially considering how late in the day it was. We crossed back over Hwy 32 and headed south on the RR grade. It was very rough and bumpy, but thankfully we met the Chute Pond groomer heading north. We rode a freshly groomed trail south to Schoolhouse Bar, where we made a rest stop. From here, we headed home on the RR grade, which was in good shape back to the Pond. We rode 49 mile today, on some pretty decent trails with some really nice people.

We really need some more snow. There's not much left for the groomers to work with. When we rode the freshly groomed trail on the grade today, I was the 8th sled in line, and the trail was soft and getting bumpy already. I don't see any big snow in the immediate forecast, so we'll just have to hope things change for the better. Until then, ride 'em while you can!

Sunday, January 10, 2009. Temperature was 11 degrees at 9:00 am.

We left the lake on Bonita Creek and headed north to Parkside BP for fuel. We continued north on the freshly groomed, flat and smooth RR grade until we turned west on the 18W trail. South of Mountain, the RR grade has some gravel mixing in with the snow, and the Puma was burning a little bit of slides because of the gravelly snow and hard packed freshly groomed trail. The 18 trail was also freshly groomed and flat, and a nice ride in spite of it being a little thin. You could see where the groomer tried to groom, but it scraped down to brown in many areas along the trail. We got to the "Big Y" intersection, and turned north towards Animal's Bear Trail. We took some nice pictures along the way, but I forgot my camera in my snowmobile jacket pocket- sorry! The trails to Animal's were noticeably better (rated good to very good) as we went west, because there was more snow to work with. We headed north into Paul Bunyan trails from Animal's, and these trails were excellent as we worked our way to the Langlade County line. We crossed over into Boulder Lake Sno-Goers' trails, and these were freshly groomed and in excellent shape as well as we went west, then south in a loop through the edge of Langlade County. We headed to Boulder Lake, then turned east again towards Chute Pond. The Chute Pond trails were freshly groomed and in good shape as headed back to 4 Corners, then a right at the "Big Y" towards Pine Grove. The trail to Pine Grove was freshly groomed and in good shape, as was the tunnel and 2112 as we headed home.

Not many days can a person say they rode 53 miles on 100% freshly groomed trails. We did just that today. We had nice, flat trails with hardly a scratch on them for our ride, and we saw only one other sled out (believe it or not, it was a twin to the Bullpen Puma!) during our two hour ride. Here is how we rate the trails we rode today:

Chute Pond- good to borderline very good, Paul Bunyan- excellent, Boulder Lake Sno-Goers- excellent.

This is a great week to enjoy some mid-week riding. I wish I was one of those people............

I promise to get some more photos next weekend (you'd really like the ones I forgot). For now, let's hope for some snow.

Webmaster's note: Here are the photos I forgot from last week- click on the photo to enlarge: