Hi Everyone, We did get another 6" to 8" of heavy snow and it’s still snowing, with another 6" to 12" forecasted for today and tonight. Plus LES snow for the next 5 days. The groomers are ready and as soon as the snow slows down so they can see, they will be out grooming. This is it for now, I have to go plowing. IATA has got the dirt graded smooth on Dec 1st and 2nd and the trails are ready for the snow that is forecasted for this weekend. This is why these trails are so great, they are graded flat before the snowmobile season. All we need is the ground to freeze and a little snow and the trails are ready. We don’t need two feet of snow to fill in the holes.

We are members of the Cycle Conservation Club of Michigan, Baldwin Trailriders Snowmobile Club, Benzie/Manistee Snowbirds Snowmobile Club, Irons Area Tourist Association Snowmobile Club, Wellston Area Recreation and Tourist Bureau Snowmobile Club, Lake County ORV Club and the Michigan Snowmobile Association, which are the local grooming clubs. I can not thank these guys and gals enough, they do a lot of work for free, so we all can enjoy this sport. I would only think that if someone is complaining about a bumpy trail on Saturday afternoon, come to a couple club meetings and see just what these people do. They would never complain again. Thank you again.

Greetings Anxious Sledders,

Welcome to the 10th season of this little deal that we generate. I wanted to wait for the launch until we had something meaningful to talk about and it would appear that a weather event is right around the corner.

I’d like to start out with a short informational introductory paragraph for the hundred and sixty or so newcomers to the report.

We are Keith and Sandy and the Girls. We are entering into our 10th year as owners of Fay’s Motel located 1.5 miles due north of beautiful Downtown Grayling. Our girls are dogs and I don’t mean ugly women they are actually dogs. Two English Setter bird dogs and our old mixed breed.

We have an acre of cleared land in the back for parking the over the road trucks and trailers, you simply off load out back and drive your sled to your door and there’s no need to trailer, you can ride out to the trails off the back of our property.

Two of Grayling’s groomers are parked here as well. If you would like additional info you can find pretty much everything you need on our website www.faysmotel.com

OKAY LET’S GO:

WEATHER:
Might as well start with the most important part first. In this report I often refer to John Dee as he is by far and away the most accurate weather source. If you’re not familiar with him check it out at John Dee Snow Central.

John and the local weather Wizards are in tune with one another on an event that is to start tomorrow night and continue into Thurs and Fri with system snow at first then turning into Lake Effect Snow (LES)

Estimates right now are in the 8-14″ range for the system and who knows when it comes to LES but any additional is a bonus.

Temps look to behave for the foreseeable future with lows going to single digits which will help to get the ground frozen soon.

GROOMING:
If all shakes out as predicted we should be fired up Wed. or Thurs. at the latest. Remember it’s a prediction at this point in time but I’m pretty confident that things will happen in our favor.

When we do fire up it will be panning in to start the base building process.

We now have two 7830 John Deere tractors along with Big Blue The Super Wedgy Grooming Machine as well. Last year with one JD and Blue we managed to groom 8040 miles using 1200 man-hours.

TRAIL AND MACHINE PREPARATION:
Just an fyi. We, the unpaid volunteers that make up the AuSable Valley Snowmobile Assoc, logged in excess of 600 man-hours this fall brushing, signing, grading and machine maintenance just to get prepared for the season.

That’s about it for now. We’ll get a flash report out when the groomers fire up and it will likely be Sandy writing because I’ll probably be a long ways from a keyboard for a few days.

Yes Pam you’re back on the list. Behave and we’ll let you stay.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.