Riding with Dan & Dylan, Weekend of January 5, 2008

Friday, January 4, 3:30 pm

    We got onto the railroad grade from Chute Pond at Bonita Creek, and headed north. The grade was flat, but very gravelly and rocky. Rocks were flying off the tracks up into the air towards the trailing sleds. Not good- avoid the railroad grade. We turned onto 18 west north of Mountain, and went to the "Y", where we went north to Animal's Bear Trail. From there we went down to Boulder Lake Lodge, then west on 18 into Langlade county. We followed the Boulder Lake Sno Goers groomer, then circled back into Paul Bunyan trails, then back south down the tunnel trail back to Chute Pond. With the exception of the railroad grade, all trails were fair to good condition. We rode 64 miles.

Saturday, January 5, 10:00 am

   We got onto the railroad grade from Chute Pond at Bonita Creek, and headed north. We took the small connecting trail to 2112. This trail was in poor condition due to logging activity- avoid this trail. We headed west on 2112 onto the tunnel trail, then west on 18 to Boulder Lake. We headed west into Langlade county, then north on the Boulder Lake Sno Goers trails towards Lily. Trails so far were in fair to good condition.

We took the Lily Snow Birds trail towards 9 Mile Resort- this trail was flat and groomed, but very thin and cocoa colored with exposed sticks and rocks. We then headed east into the Red Arrow trails towards Townsend. These trails were very brown and very bumpy. We headed down 7 south to town and got gas at the Townsend Shell station. The 7 trail was in surprisingly fair to good condition.

We doubled back north and took the trail east out of Townsend. These trails were thin and cocoa colored but reasonably smooth. We joined up with Paul Bunyan trails as we headed east and south towards Crooked Lake. We stopped for lunch at Prospect Lodge- good burgers. All Paul Bunyan trails were very brown and very bumpy- in poor condition.

We picked up the Iron Snowshoe trails, which were brown but reasonably smooth, and headed into Crooked Lake, where we took the pipeline south. The pipeline was in very poor condition as we headed south. Big brown and bare spots, big holes- bad deal- avoid this trail. We got south of Old 64 on the pipeline and ran into Trail Boss Dan Huth and Adam. They were working on re-routing the trail because of standing water and extremely poor conditions south of Old 64. We took the new detour west on Swamp Rd to Jack Pine, then joined up with the existing trail further south. These trails were very nice- freshly groomed and lightly traveled.

We headed west back towards Chute Pond, got onto 18 west, and got back onto the lake at the Kingston Bridge. The trails towards the end of our ride were very thin and in fair condition.

We rode 125 miles today. It was definitely worth getting the sleds out and riding today. The good trails outweighed the bad, and overall we rate the trail conditions as "fair".

Dan & Dylan