$.25 Failure

Uller grooming day today. No problem. Nice and cold. We didn’t even need the wipers during the first 2 hours. It was like we were working in a big city park. Sun was coming out...

Crunch.

Sometimes the only thing holding the equipment together is a $0.25 washer. We had one give out near the intersection of the Orange and Yellow loops. When that happens, the whole track pod or module un-ships and, well, it’s over.

It’s an hour’s walk (through some pretty country albeit) back to the Weber Lk parking lot. Luckily we were coordinating with the Iron County Forestry Department. They grabbed the Ranger’s Gator, put it on a trailer and headed our way with the necessary tools to at least get the broken gator out of the woods. It took us over two hours before we could even begin to decide what to do about the trail.

Noon. Back at the starting point. But we had the Club gator and the track sled was right where we broke down. We headed back up the trail (a gator can straddle the tracks we set earlier) and hitched it all back up.

By 2:45 we had everything tracked, the snowmobile damage on the Krankkala Spur repaired and were headed back to Pence by way of snowmobile trail #77.

Uller’s conditions are very good. Our trips back and forth with tools and the broken gator (that came out of the woods with 3 tracks and a rear tire) roughed up the outsides of the trail, the stem lanes. The tracks were pretty much left un-molested. So, if you’re headed out to the western loops of Uller this weekend, keep in mind that a few of the loops are a little rough on the edges.

But, wow is the snow nice and some of the trees still have some of the ‘Christmas Lights’ storm snow on them. This country is amazing! Z