…So, that said, the Hygge Hike that NICER and the Rangers are putting together for the end of this month is going to be special this year.

Expect the event we’ve all grown to love - but just know that we’ll all be out there in defiance of the lamest winter any of us have experienced in our lifetimes. Come out and celebrate our bull-headed ability to enjoy breathing fresh air in the woods. Come share in the simple satisfaction of crunching around on month old snow that barely covers the frozen red mud...

There’s some more fine grained snow coming off the lake the past 24 hours and it will help.  We’ll see just how much Gitchi Gumi wants to give us.

But the real story is the action on the east end of the Montreal Trails this week.  A group of families asked for a Ranger to guide a snowshoe outing in the middle of the week.  The Trail Chief had the time, so he got out there and was greeted by a good 15 young adventurers, ready to go.  

Old school skiers in the 60’s and early 70’s set track with their skis.  That’s what we decided to do today.  We’re not talking the big hills and quick turns out there, we’re talking the novice loops and flat stretches we’ve got.  We set tracks with our wide, Hok skis (from our sponsor Altai Skis) or the old rock skis we haven’t used in years.  We skied around known rocks and on the edge of perineal water pockets; but we skied the ‘best line’ too.

The old Trail Chief is ready.  The Sunday Service crew did yeoman’s work on the trails this fall.  All of us walking the trails these past 3 weeks are impressed with how good they look.  Wind fall cleared, overhanging branches cut, little nasty pole grabbing woody stems mowed down with the zest of brush saws.  Between you and the Chief, with no snow, we can all see the fall work done this year.  Most years (97%) the snow buries all evidence of fall work completed and we just merrily ski over it…

The Chief of Trails has kept records of every winter for the past five decades; over all those years, the average first day of grooming is 12 December.  We’ve been snookered by early winter snows the past few years.  Don’t get depressed, we’ll be skiing (freely) soon.

50 years on Uller. I sit and stare, not knowing where to start, how much to write and where to stop.

The Rangers threw a wonderful get together at the new cabin out on the trail. There was food, drink, smoke and a bunch of surprises. They celebrated me and it felt good; but I tried to make sure everyone there recognized that it wasn’t just me out there for the last five decades.

We’ve seen them every winter, maybe not as long and not accompanied by .68 inches of rain; but we get our December thaw, our January thaw and our February thaw every year. This year, December’s was OK, we’ll take it. January’s was a serious nightmare with the light rain wetting everything up and then a good coating of 7” of heavy snow. The snow stuck to the wet branches, twigs and needles. There were miles of snow-bent trees, turning the trails into literal walls of snow.

But our base was good, we’d done just enough work to survive the thaws and re-set everything…

Heuristics. Rules ofThumb. Benchmarks. 

Somehow they’ve become important to me. There are two nondescript places that tell me when we can start real winter work on Montreal and Uller…

You’d think, after 49 years, 11 months of observing, worrying over, snowshoeing over, shoveling out of, skiing on and grooming our snow-packs, we’d have seen it all.

Guess not…

The Iron County Forestry Department and the Rangers worked together today on Uller.

Sometimes, the long trail can get way ahead of us. It’s there with it’s two water gaps and three wind gaps collecting inches, feet of snow off the Lake while we try to keep our driveways clear and shovel off our roofs.

Then it’s time to try to work our way through it…

“BTW, Smith’s Ck bridge is gone” 

Ah, what do you mean, “gone”?

“It’s gone, Grubby had to winch across after cutting windfall from the Pass to Smith’s.”

There are tracks on Montreal.  Everything but Verner’s and Pavlovich are tracked and, frankly not all that bad; pretty good for 9” of snow on the ground…

The old trail Chief is off on family times welcoming a new grandbaby into the world. The snow is right for setting up a base. It feels a little weird; but it’s all as it should be.

There’s some snow on our trails. What we got a week ago is slowly settling and being melted from the ground up but there’s talk of some big snow coming. We’ll see, it all depends on the angle of the wind and the humidity around us.

We’re all excited and anticipating the winter approaching but think twice - Wisconsin Deer Gun Season starts this Saturday. For these nine days, there will be many people out there with high powered rifles.

From November 19th to the 27th, Don’t go out on our trails or anywhere else in the woods without blaze orange on at least half your body.

On the Montreal Trails, don’t go anywhere near the Pence Loop, Calucchi’s, Stanley’s, Pavlovitch, or Deep Rock trails. These are private lands and there are numerous active deer stands on those trails. These private land owners graciously allow us to use their land; but only after they are done deer hunting. Please respect their time out there.

However, we installed the tracks on the Gator. We’ll start the Alpine and the Tundra (there will be some blue smoke along Illinois Ave in Montreal) in anticipation of packing trail; but we really get these machines up and running this time of year in case the Iron County Sheriff’s Office needs us to help out on a lost hunter or a snow emergency during deer season.

If that’s obscure, we work together up here. We have to, there just aren’t a lot of people in our woods. We all have to cooperate.

Be careful for the next week or so; but get out there.

We’ll see you on the tracks. Very. Soon.

Ski freely. Z

Our ‘Ides of October’ snow storm is gone, down the creeks. The 11” of heavy snow was gone in a week. Our power was gone for 6 hours. It’s been more like September than late October since…

…On the other hand, every turn, every change in aspect will show you another unique picture of winter in crystal, diamond beauty. Don’t miss it.

…So dust off your old ‘Pokies, are your Madsus Birkebiners pine tarred? Still got the old Normark bindings and those nasty Woolrich knickers? It’s a true cane pole weekend coming up.

A feeling of comfort and cozy ness in the middle of winter.

NICER, a local group, joined us again to provide a memorable outdoor winter event. What a spectacle!

There are people living around here who are, quite frankly, geniuses. They don’t advertise. One finds out about them by observing and listening; but they are there. They can come into a cold garage and poke here and there, pull things apart and stick the amp meter on them and come up with a solution, a fix and, in this case, all the parts and pieces necessary to solve our IEP (inexplicable electronic phenomenon).

There are some wonderful tracks out there. The crew has done an amazing job so far this week. Uller’s all set up. There’s plans to re-do Montreal early Saturday morning.

Those skiing Uller won’t ever see the two places we had to flop around on the snow to replace track assemblies that decided to give out.