Happy Easter from Lilah!
easter
Snowmobile Tickets and Skylines
Today was bright and sunny too. They sky was so clear we had to go up Littl Blue Mountain(edit: the previous link was wrong and linked to little blue not littl blue) again. We did and there were actually other people at the top! Some guys were fiddling with a broken down 2007 Yamaha and I had to snicker. Give me a Polaris any day. Mine is a 2006 but my parents have a 1979, 1995 and 1997 which are all still running solid and they’ve never had to do much to any of them.
From the top of Littl Blue we could see White Face Mountain crystal clear almost 70 miles away. The picture doesn’t come close to doing it justice but it’s the best I could do. Just the shear vastness of the space you can see up in the mountains like this is always impressive. I created the panorama to demonstrate.
We had our snacks on Littl Blue and then headed down for some scenic riding. Along one of the main trails we hit a snowmobile traffic stop. Yes, on easter sunday the cops have nothing better to do than look for snowmobilers riding without insurance and with expired registrations. We were all valid and were just about to go when the cop noticed my insurance paper had expired a few weeks earlier. Great. I explained to him that it definately is still covered I just had forgotton to grab the new paperwork. “We have no way to tell” he said as he issued me a ticket. Awesome, now I have to deal with getting that dropped when I get home. This crap irritates me for lots of reasons but I’m not going to complain about it here.
After getting delayed by the traffic cops we headed on to horseshoe lake. The trail had been cleaned up since we were there a few days ago and it was a much better ride. It’s a good thing because I was tired of bouncing up and down on moguls.
The sun was a lot warmer today. It was just warm enough to melt some of the snow on the south side of the hills. The air was still cold however; that when the water ran down and started to drip it would freeze instantly creating some very neat ice formations.
Cheney Takes Visa
We got an earlier start today and were on the trails by 10am. After hearing that Easter dinner would be ready when we got back we had to make sure we put on the miles early and were back in time for the feast. We put on roughly 100 miles again and made it back by 6pm.
First stop today was Camp. Along the way we crossed the North branch of the Grasse River as well as a branch of the Oswegatchie. The scenery was beautiful as were the trails. We certainly hit this trip perfect. In most sections there was several feet of hard packed snow and ice. Step off the hard packed groomed trail though and you were likely to sink up to your waist.
If you need a place to stay out on the trail just stop by Cheney’s Camp. Apparently they take visa or MasterCard so you should be good to go. Fortunately no friends were shot in the face while filming this cabin.
The sleds were running great today and yesterday with the cold weather and hard packed trails. If you punched it you’d lift the skis right off the ground which makes for tricky cornering. We hit 75mph on a few of the straightaways without even pushing it.
The last stop of the day was The Pinecone at the southern end of Cranberry Lake in Wanakena. Once we got on the Setback Trail to Wanakena the trail got pretty rough. You can definitely tell the difference between groomed trails and not. The setback trail was miles of moguls and switchbacks. Eventually it let you out in Wanakena and we were able to take a quick rest at The Pinecone before heading home.
It’s amazing the amount of scenery you can see up here while riding the snowmobiles. It would take you months on skis to see what we’ve seen in two days. That’s easily the best part of riding. You are in remote locations that are often inaccessible any other time of the year. 4-wheelers are not always allowed on the same trails which makes it difficult to cover a lot of the ground. I would love to take a snowmobile trip into remote sections of Canada. Maybe next year we’ll take a week and head up to the big country.
Randy Aldrich 