[arcticcatmatt]

Mike (not on SF) and EMTP579) met up at my place here in Berkshire on 2-27-10 (Yesterday as I write this). We just got 12-30 inches of fresh pow pow. As we head out Mike gets his sled stuck in my lawn LOL! Off to a good start! We get 1/2 mile away and Dan gets his stuck on the trail LOL! I am ahead of the guys busting trail. The trail goes over a bridge and pops out of the woods to run along the side of the rail on the railroad tracks that are not used often and buried under all the snow. I get a ski over one rail.. Now you would assume this is just two rails... WRONG, it turns into a "switch" where 2 other rails leave the normal rail system. This goes from narrow to WIDE and of course stopped my sled DEAD from about 20 mph. Mike was about 20 feet behind me and WHAMO I stop dead. Bars hit my tekvest hard and I go over the bars and land on my back. I heard my neck and back crack a bit and saw stars for a minute. Knocked the wind out of me good too. Man that hurt but I didn't break nothing on me for once. Too bad the helmet camera wasn't on. I stopped so fast my snow flap got caught up in my track.

I called the local trail boss I know that lives 1 mile away to see if he was coming thru with the groomer but he was not and said wouldn't be till next week. He informed me a few other people have done the same thing. One Rev busted off an A-arm and another sled had to be disassembled to get it off. I took another approach. Sledgehammers on both sides and a guy pulling from the rear. It worked! Good thing I was less than a mile from home. Took 2 sledhammers, a crowbar, 1 2x4, and an hour of time and grunting. I have a few parts to order but oh well.
Onto the riding!

The whitney point club did some grooming! Sweet (I do not know why the dryden club wasn't going to groom for awhile. The email said something about it being too wet of snow.

 

[arcticcatmatt]

 

[arcticcatmatt]

This is where the pictures stopped. We were now on 2B by Greek Peek. I headed up a decent hill breaking trail. Dan and Mike were behind me on their yammi's and we all know yammi's are not good at this.. Yep, both stuck. I went over the hill and down and turned around. I tried to go over a big plowed snow bank and slid down the side of it into 3 feet to get stuck. A few hikers helped me dig it out so that I would pack down a trail for them to take their kids sledding haha. 10 mins later I was out and ripping back up the hill to find the guys. I seen them 1/2 way up the hill but I could not stop. I had to keep going and break trail for us. They didn't follow and I came back to see whats up. Dan is not happy at all about getting stuck and almost hitting a tree in the tight trail and he is not happy it is getting dark. Short version - he is pretty pissed off and said NO MORE PICTURES when I asked him to take some [lol8]. I then broke trail to Adams hill road (about 4-5 miles of state land) with the guys in tow. It is very low visibility now and we have lots of miles to go in the dark in 3 feet of snow. We had an option to bail at this point or have me bust trail the 15-20 miles home. We opted to bail. My brother drove us to my house to get the vehicles and trailers.

Now it has been a day and he said there are 4 sleds stuck out there right now. Nobody has made it up the hill. Rough conditions out there. He took this picture of his house. That is a FLAT lawn

So we trailered home and that was that. I had a friggen BLAST. I think Mike really liked it.. Dan trailered 1-2 hrs away today to hit groomed trails, he doesn't want to see the kind of riding we did in this thread ever again [lol8]

60 miles it was and felt like 300.. Great times [8D]

(Quick edit here - I went back and put up a sign to prevent others from hitting the switch.. ya never know)

 

[zecow224]

wish we could get some of that.

 

[nhrider]

Sounds like a blast!! Besides of course the r/r accident.

 

[OldCatRider]

Hey Matt, I talked to Jeff B about that.
He told me that the snow was to deep for the groomers and that they did not want any of them getting stuck/sliding off the trail routes.
Better that the trails get broken open first and grooming to commence next week.

 

[blalonde87]

Matt...we were thinking of taking 2B home but I looked down and it was not broke yet so we opted out of that idea. Don't worry though we decided to take the back way out of the gatherings and I found trail that still needed breaking...including an undrifted field with probably almost 3 feet of fresh powder. Didn't get stuck on the first pass but went back to help everyone else and got mine burried. Oh well it was a good time anyway.

 

[TRICKPaint]

Looks awesome Matt! Hope you didn't bugger' up anything too bad on yourself or machine. Sounds like a bad land mine to hit at any speed.

So this was all riding around your place!?... It's obvious you had a blast despite the nasty trick Thomas The Train pulled on you.