Groomer's Report: After Hours Ski Trail
By Dave Johnson
March 24, 2004
Today I had the pleasure of meeting with Steve Peterson
of the Wisconsin DNR at the After Hours Ski Trail in Brule.
We made an appointment to meet each other at 6:00 am for me
to check out their custom made grooming equipment. Doing what
groomers love best, I rose before the sun and drove from Duluth
to Brule. My goal was to see if the custom made YTS grooming
implement would break up the ice that we are currently dealing
with. It was the perfect day for the test. Yesterday had been
a warm day and then it was a nice below freezing night. The
trails at Brule were every bit as icy as what we are dealing
with at Snowflake.
Steve had arrived before me and was taking a small loop with
the Tucker Sno-Cat pulling the custom made YTS groomer. It
is the same design as the YTS Ginzo Groomer, only it is 10
feet wide and uses hydraulic actuators instead of electric
ones to raise and lower the knifes. The first pass with the
groomer broke the crusty, icy snow into chunks the size of
baseballs on down. Steve greeted me and asked if I would like
to drive the Tucker and go over a second time on the small
loop that he had groomed. After two passes about half of those
chunks had been broken up. It looked like it would take about
3-4 passes on the icy, crusty snow to achieve a soft but packable
surface.
Spring grooming without a tiller is really a labor intensive
exercise. It is hard on equipment and expensive to do. If
possible it seems best to just wait on the weather. A hard
icy trail at 6 am can become perfect corn snow at 11:00 am
with warmer temps and sun. At Snowflake it has been our practice
to groom with the weather, wait for warmer temps to soften
the snow before attempting heroic measures. The custom made
YTS groomer seems like it would be an excellent item for icy
conditions if you needed to invest the time and money for
an important event. At just under $9,000 it is quite a bit
less than a pisten bully type of vehicle with a snow tiller.
The After Hours Ski Trail is blessed with some wonderful
assets. They have a long history of plentiful snow, beautiful
terrain, and a stable full of fine grooming equipment. I would
say that the best asset is Steve Peterson the Brule DNR manager.
He cares deeply about skiers, the land and enjoys providing
the best conditions that he is able to.
If you haven't had a chance to ski at the After Hours Trail
yet, I would strongly encourage you to do so. Steve would
love to see you there, his advice at this time of year is
to come on a warmer day as the trails are just softening up.
Due to the demands of the spring time duties Steve is not
able to have his staff groom as often as they would like to.
This grooming life, it is all about finding the balance between,
money, time, product and customers. I think Steve has done
a great job at achieving that balance.
Photos
Photoset from Dave Johnson (15 photos)
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About the author...
Dave Johnson lives in Duluth and teaches and coaches
at Marshall School. He also finds time to help with
the grooming/racing at Snowflake, as well as developing
a short loop at Marshall, and has been the president
of the Minnesota State High School Nordic Ski Coaches
Association.
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