Busted

Twelve days after, we finally got on top of Uller. As of tonight, Uller’s western loops are tracked, The main stem from the west end of the loops all the way to Pence is packed. It’s not pretty yet; well, the woods are and the snow is awesome; but the trail doesn’t look like we want it yet. We’ll get to that.

We can’t express our gratitude enough to all those intrepid souls who have taken their time (and their snow shoes) to foot pack out ahead of us. They did a wonderful job; made it easy for us to run the machines through and gave us a safety line to get back to when we floundered on the 800 pound machines.

They went out when it was -9ºF. They went out when it was actually sleeting on us for an hour or so. Awesome.

The plan for the next few days is to keep working the middle of the trail, rolling, dragging and, of course setting track. We’ll get there.

Then there’s that 24” aspen that fell lengthways along the trail on the Krankkala Spur. We got enough of it cut to get our breaking machines through; but it’s going to take the county’s tackle and the winches on the Gator to move the blocks we had to cut.

Nothing new.

But having only a pair of Gator tracks down from the ’T’ to Hoyt Rd kind of ate away at us… Like we said, it just didn’t look even remotely pretty. Two of us took off with the club Gator, the 6’ roller and the old faithful Alpine at mid-afternoon. The temperature was going to be a little on the warm side; but heck-with-it, let’s go.

Though it takes a good hour to get to the ’T’ from Pence, it’s much easier to pack, roll and groom from the ‘High Point’ down and, yes, things got a little sticky until shortly after the Scribner’s Meadow cabin. Either the temps dropped or we dropped down into colder air; but wow, did the roller and the compactor bar, set at 80% do a nice job of setting up a new base. No tracks yet, the county and the Chief will attempt to do those on Thursday.

Look for some good pictures; the Gator driver took his good camera out. We even got a couple of needed waypoint signs up!

The forecasted temperatures look like winter is settling in, at least for a while.

Don’t miss a chance to get up into the Range on Uller; it’s most wonderful at this time. Just watch out for some sawdust mixed into the trail on the K-Spur!

Get on out there. Enjoy all the work your friends and neighbors did out there. Ski Freely. Z