Grooming Thoughts

[millertime]

Down here in the Northern Milwaukee area, we have not been able to open our trails yet, due to lack of snow.

Got us a bit of debate going on down here.....

Question for you expert groomers out there: How often to you roll/pack your trails after your first couple snowfalls and prior to opening the trails?

MT

 

[jr37]

It really depends on the conditions, but 2 times is not out of the question and maybe even 3 times.

 

[millertime]

The debate is heated, part of the club thinks we are wasting fuel (15 hours to groom our system), others think the fields become to exposed to sun. The other half thinks it is the right thing to do. We only have about 6" of snow on the ground.... I am stuck in the middle!

 

[jr37]

It's not actually wasting fuel. Grooming is a reimbursable expense. You are being paid to groom the trails, with the hope that you are improving them.

 

[90s]

early grooming

we always go out and pack or "pan" the trails as soon as we have approx 6" of snow. The idea here is to fill in the ruts & holes and level the trail and set the base.. What you want is a hard base, it is better to groom with a little snow, then wait until you get a foot. An early snow that has a high moisture content is ideal, but you have to work with what you have.

 

[Deleted member 10829]

Sleds always do the best job of packing the first snow down. If you had 10" or more on the ground, I would suggest panning it, but since you are only at 6", I would wait for more snow or wait until sleds have been on the trail for a day or two.

 

[440_chazz]

Down here we get a lot of drifting in fence lines and road crossings, its nice to have the groomer open up the road crossings and drifted in fence lines. It keeps sleds on the trail that way. But I agree with waiting a bit for clubs to groom and pan trails first before they open.

 

[millertime]

It's not actually wasting fuel. Grooming is a reimbursable expense. You are being paid to groom the trails, with the hope that you are improving them.

You are correct, however if the county/state were to audit you and you had groomed twice and the trails never opened (hope we don't have one of those years) then you may not get the money back... right? In addition, we have quite a bit of club trails that are not part of the reimbursement program....

 

[jr37]

You are correct, however if the county/state were to audit you and you had groomed twice and the trails never opened (hope we don't have one of those years) then you may not get the money back... right? In addition, we have quite a bit of club trails that are not part of the reimbursement program....

There is nothing saying that you can not groom more than once before the trails open. I would be concerned if you groomed half a dozen times or so, but nothing to be concerned about with 2 or 3 times. The DNR does not know what each clubs trail condition are, and I don't think that they will get into the business of telling us when we can groom, if there is snow.

 

[srt20]

we always go out and pack or "pan" the trails as soon as we have approx 6" of snow. The idea here is to fill in the ruts & holes and level the trail and set the base.. What you want is a hard base, it is better to groom with a little snow, then wait until you get a foot. An early snow that has a high moisture content is ideal, but you have to work with what you have.

X2.

 

[packerlandrider]

I say groom as many times as it takes to get the trails in good shape, depending on snow conditions. With this first snowfall and all the wind, our club runs a good amount of railroad grade that had 8 foot changes in snow depth due to drifting. At the beginning of the week (Monday night) our club had our Tucker unhooked from its drag and it was still getting stuck. Obviously, it took a great deal of amount of time to get this part of the trail ready for snowmobiles. By the time our trails opened of Friday at noon, we had around 50 hours on our Tucker and a few hours on our Tractor. Our trails still are not perfect, but you would never guess how bad parts of those trails were by riding them now and after riding yesterday are the best in the county.

I have been wondering how clubs up north are able to run their equipment every day for three months, while clubs from the southern half of the state are worried about how much they are grooming when their trails are possibly only opened for two weeks. I know a couple years ago when we had a good winter many of the clubs in the county got extra money from the state to help pay for the extra fuel expenses. Do northern clubs get that much more revenue from outside of what they get from the state (ei. club fundraisers), or do they just know they will get reimbersed at the end of the year?