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Adventures in Snowcatting

Here's a blast from the past for me. I used to run this tucker back in the mid to late 90's when I was fresh out of high school. It's lived at another club 6 hrs away since '99 when we traded it for our first Lamtrac. The club that had it was kind enough to loan it to the club with the broken BR180 for the remainder of the season. I cut my snowcatting teeth on this machine. Prior to this '93 tucker, our club only had a small bombi which I ran a few times.


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If you're on facebook and have a few minutes to kill, check out the link below. Scroll down a little bit and there's some video of the rescue mission hauling the broke down BR180 and drag back to town. Looks like they're cruising along at a good pace.
https://www.facebook.com/snowclublonglacgeraldton?fref=nf
 
Just posted a thread on last weekends outing...

Its in the same section as this...

Video below for those whos interested...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ceIgF7EkdY"]Snowcat Adventure into Sierra Nevadas snow - YouTube[/ame]
 
Thanks guys...

It was a pleasure to get out, I'm sure you all know the feeling...

Video is mixed from iPhone 6S, GoPro & Canon DSLR... (mostly iPHone thou)
 
Time to blow the dust off this thread and breathe some life into it. I never did get back into grooming when I moved to the city in 2012. I contacted the guy in charge of the grooming here to see if they could use a hand. Turns out they have 2 groomers and 400kms of trail to maintain and only 5 guys to do it. Their longest run is 40 hrs straight.

I have to do a 3 hr online training session and give them a bunch of info then hopefully you will see me out running the groomer again in the next few weeks. Their current fleet consists of an older br180 and a newer husky.
 
Another thing covid messed up. I was all set to start grooming back in '21. Well, covid restrictions meant that two people from different households couldn't be in the groomer at the same time. Which meant I had to wait to get trained. I never looked into it last year but have now been out for 30 hours along with another operator to learn the machine and trail system.



I was out on a 10 hour run covering covering approximately 85km of trail. Our club has 2 groomers covering a 400km trail system.




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Last Friday, I was set to go grooming standing at the door with my winter gear waiting for a ride with another operator when our shift was canceled due to the cold. This week, it's too warm but temperatures are supposed to cool Friday. Hope so as another operator and I are running both machines out 8 hrs down the trail at a staging area for next week when we have a 40 hrs overnight trip booked for both groomers to open a trail to the American border as we have sledders from Minnesota who like coming up to ride the trails.


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I have a hydraulic question for you guys. On one of the husky's, as soon as we let off the button on the steering yoke to raise the back of the drag, the tires raise and the drag lowers back down. Meaning you have to hold the button down to keep it lifted however you can get it to stay up by repeatedly pushing the button on the yoke until it stops in the lifted position. I don't think it's hydraulic. Maybe the toggle switch on the dash has worn contacts?
 
I just finished a 10 hr run in the groomer covering 83km. Myself and another operator headed out at 6am to first drive 30km west to drop a vehicle at the parking spot for what would be a one way marathon run with 2 groomers. We then drove to where they were parked and fired them up. After warning up the engines, we headed out.
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We did a lot of road riding today unfortunately as a 16km section of the trail is logging road that wasn't previously plowed in the winter. That was interesting to say the least. Walking a snowcat pulling a drag down a narrow logging road with oncoming transports. As we had snowcats, we had to quickly jump up on the snowbank on the shoulder of the road and they're coming at you doing a good speed. Picture this...I'm second cat in line going downhill towards a single lane bridge. There's a transport coming downhill from the other direction toward that same bridge. He can't stop. I came to a full stop then quickly maneuvered the groomer and drag up onto the snowbank seconds before the transport went flying by.
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I'm heading out early tomorrow morning with another operator to run both machines on a 90km run. First, a side note. We have a seasonal campsite located 100km from the city. If you look at the "11" at the top of the map, on the north side of the highway, there's a lake to the right. That's our campground.

Anyhow, a couple other operators ran the machines through as far as the green stops on Sunday and yesterday. We will be continuing on and turning left then heading south to the US border and returning as far as northern light lake. We will be breaking trail through 3ft of snow.

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DAVENET said:
That's a long haul!
Click to expand...
That's the average run. Takes usually around 12 hrs for a 90km round trip but we'll be breaking trail and apparently there's a couple of bad spots with running water across the trail so we'll be loading up a bunch of pallets on the packing pan of the drag I'll be towing to place down before using the blade to build a snow bridge.

We may end up canceling the run though and waiting for colder weather as that is the current radar and that blob is on a northern trajectory straight towards us. It's currently above freezing and raining but that is supposed to change to snow overnight hopefully.

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Yawn. Yesterday was a looooong day. I left the house at 5:30am and drove to the nearest community 10 minutes away where I met up with another operator and someone who was going to drive us to the machines where they were parked 100km west. It was plus 2 Celsius and raining all night when we left town to head to the machines. Only minutes out, it changed to snow and the wind picked up. We were under a severe weather advisory. After white knuckling it for 40km in about 6" of slush on the road we arrived at the machines and fired them up. The temperature had dropped to minis 7. We left around 9am and headed south for 60km stopping to fill in creeks and cut a few trees weighed down by heavy snow. The whole day went smoothly except for an 1D10T error on my part. We broke trail for 30km then arrived at red pine lodge where we stopped for lunch with the owners. We left there around 3 pm and had to road ride for a 1km to get back on the trail. I didn't see where the first machine turned right. Well, I turned left and ended up having to go a couple km down the trail to turn around. Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful. We pulled back into the resort at 9pm and purchased 370l of diesel fuel then put the machines to bed for the night and were picked up by another operator to make the 100km drive down a snowy bush road to get home. I arrived home at 12:15am.

The pallets on the back of the drag were used to lay down in a fast moving creek with 2ft of water to get a base to push snow onto for a snow bridge.
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A picture of the brush bar in action. I stopped several times to clear out the brush. But considering the trail hadn't been done in 3 years, it was full of tag alders. With both machines passing over it along with the brush bar doing it's thing, we ended up with a perfect trail 16ft wide in most spots. This trail links up with the Minnesota trail system.


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As we were going, we were climbing higher and higher then when we were almost at the turnaround spot, the trail came out to an area with a 100ft rock wall on the left and about a 400ft drop on the right. Very pretty view. Off in the distance on the opposite side of the lake is the American border. There's a lodge on the American side people must report to and scan their passport.

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A perfectly laid ribbon behind
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I was out today with another operator running both snowcats over our northern section of trail. We left shortly after 7am and by 4:30pm, we had groomed 70km of trail. Today was a boring monotonous day as it was about 3 hrs total of road riding.


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I went that way this morning headed out on a 120km run. I was in the newer 16 husky this time. It has narrower tracks and a 9ft drag. The 08 husky was run this time by my grooming partner ron. He had air filter issues and had to limp it home for the last 3 hrs running at half speed. Which is a whopping 6km per hr. Not bad though. I left him behind at 4pm and pulled into the yard at 6. He made it back at 7:35pm. We did 120km today. I'm beat.

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