BWCA groomer ride Upper Gunflint trail system Boundary Waters Group Forum: XC Ski
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      groomer ride Upper Gunflint trail system     

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02/22/2014 01:14PM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)
today is my lucky day!!! I get to ride along with Bob, the groomer, and watch, take pics, ask questions, see animal tracks... on the upper gunflint ski trail system.
this morning we did Lonely Lake, part of South Rim, and Amperage. let me just say that words can not describe the stunning beauty of 18 inches of fresh, wet, heavy snow.
we crossed paths with some folks out breaking their own trail. they have to move off the trail or get run over, so we'd watch as they gingerly stepped off the side and sink up to their thighs. hopefully they were thankful to have a track to ski in once they dug themselves out of the deep snow.
this afternoon we are doing the Overlook, Highlands, Ham Lake, North Star and Upper West End.

it's amazing how much work goes into grooming. it's not just hopping into the piston bully and taking off. many intersections have to be gone over multiple times to make sure all snow is flat.

taking tons of photo and movie clips and will post some later.

 
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schweady
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02/22/2014 03:38PM  
Enjoy! Looking forward to the pics!
 
02/22/2014 09:34PM  
Something special about being outdoors in the woods or on a lake after a fresh snow. I take it in and think how lucky I am.
 
02/24/2014 03:00PM  
grooming activity

so... I took 601 photos and movie clips!!! it was so much fun. we ended up just packing several trails Saturday. the snow was so wet it was hard to set a track without the sides falling in. sunday morning we went out at 4:45am and that was the best for seeing animal tracks: moose, lynx, wolf, fox, bunnies!!! and then it started snowing again :(.

some trails had 3-4 foot drifts but Bob just used the plow feature on the front of the piston bully and moved it out of the way. overall, there was probably 15-17 inches of new wet heavy snow.

what a great way to spend a day off! hope the link opens. I might add more photos when I get someplace with real internet.
 
schweady
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02/24/2014 03:34PM  

Here is the link

with '&viewusername=Mocha' inserted into the address. Need that when sharing with others, I guess...
 
schweady
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02/24/2014 03:39PM  
Very cool, Mocha. Love the animal track pics. What's the vista in image 3?
 
02/24/2014 05:47PM  
Cool.
That also shows what people are missing by not coming up skiing,things like moose and possible Lynx(that is one of the few animals I am still waiting to see in my life-seen there tracks in the snow and they are big).
 
02/24/2014 05:53PM  
thanks for the link fix... not sure how you did that. I copied and pasted from the address bar but I guess that doesn't work.

Bob, the groomer, thinks there must be at least 4 different lynx based on where he's seen there tracks. it's amazing they can just run and float on top of the deep snow when other animals sink. bunnies float, too!

the moose tracks we saw in an area where moose used to be very prevalent up until a few years ago. it was exciting to see the tracks running along and not being followed by wolf tracks.

image 3 is the view from the Highlands ski trail. looking NNW. the west end of gunflint lake is on the right side middle of the photo. on a clear day the view is down the granite river.

the animals do love the "paved" trails. overnight between Saturday and Sunday there was a little family of wolves that slept behind the groomer shed. bob followed them on the trail from the groomer shed to the parking area behind our outfitting building where I was waiting. I didn't see them. the moose tracks were new overnight. it's a possibility the moose was in the area as we were coming down the rabbit run trail toward the junction of aspen alley and far end of highlands trail. at first we thought there were two moose but then we found how it turned around and came back and we followed the tracks along the aspen alley trail.

map of upper gunflint trails

hope this link works!
 
schweady
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02/24/2014 06:45PM  
quote Mocha: "thanks for the link fix... not sure how you did that. I copied and pasted from the address bar but I guess that doesn't work.


I don't mean to beat it to death, Mocha, but I do enjoy the photo albums that you post so much that I thought I'd make sure that you realized what I had done. It's actually just a simple matter of adding in some username info into the link address, changing it from

http://www.bwca.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=photos.view&catid=3819&journalname=Grooming%20ski%20trails

to

http://www.bwca.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=photos.view&catid=3819&viewusername=Mocha&journalname=Grooming%20ski%20trails

The first link works fine for you personally when you're logged on; the second version is the address needed by others.

(The map link was fine, of course, and much appreciated.)
 
02/25/2014 12:47PM  
thanks, schweady! I did not know about adding the username part. good info to have.
 
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