Greetings to all of you anxious Sledders,

I know, I know, I’m late at getting this, the 14th year of this gig started and I don’t have any excuses other than I’m genuinely lazy and possess all of the characteristics of your most reviled, get nothing done, politician except for the fact that I am honest, especially when it comes to this report. I can’t get myself all lathered up on politics because in the lodging business one never talks politics or religion as you’re certain to tick someone off and that’s not a good deal for anyone.

To all of you that are new to this report I will offer up an intro, to those of you that are veteran readers you can either go watch TV for a minute or of course scroll down to the section that interests you the most, it’s kind of a written musical interlude if you will. I’m sure that there are six or eight that get my weird sense of humor in that sentence.

We are Keith and Sandy and The Girls and we own Fay’s Motel in Grayling, the Girls don’t actually own the Motel as they are our bird dogs, anyway, I groom trails and have been doing so for 13 years and I’ve been producing this thing for that many years as well. We pride ourselves in disseminating honest reports, whether that be online or over the phone. Our motto is ‘ a lie today will get you a short term financial gain followed by a long term loss ‘ and we stick by that rule when reporting.
Okay all you veterans you can now come back to the report.

ALL RIGHT LET’S GET ON WITH IT SHALL WE:

CURRENT SNOW CONDITIONS:
We only have about 4 or so inches on the ground and that’s about 4′ short of what we need to get the groomers cranked up and running. The main reason for this amount of snow being less than what we need to get moving is that it’s Lake Effect Snow or LES, a term that will be used many times in future reports. LES has no MOISTURE in it and it’s only real attribute in small portions is that it’s WHITE, it is not a base building snow by any means, but if you get enough of it in a dumping it becomes much better than nothing.

BASE:
I realize that this report is lengthy and the first one of the year always is, but bear with me it’ll be over soon. The term ‘base’ is probably the least understood term in reporting. That of course is my humble opinion after doing this for a week or 156, I think that’s what 13 years times 12 weeks per season works out to be. Base to me is what your carbides are riding on and that’s what we report. If you have 5′ of fluff your carbides are pretty much riding on dirt. Conversely if you have 5′ of system snow and we compress that with the drag you might end up with 1′ or 2′ of snow that is the start of your base. We don’t get 5′ of system snow and somehow miraculously end up with 5′ of base, doesn’t work that way.

CURRENT TRAIL CONDITIONS:
I’m going with not recommended at this time with no real base due to not enough snow to get us started. There is snow in the forecast and it is LES which means that it’s anybody’s guess as to who gets what.

I promise the next report will be shorter and it will also be produced when we get enough snow to get the groomers fired up.

Until then,

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

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