Trails Held up as Well as can be Expected

10:00 AM - February 13, 2024

Tuesday, Feb 13th, 2024, Club #1 The trails held up as well as can be expected. We had the Groomers cover all the main trails from Bathurst and Bass River on Trail 19 to Popple Depot on Trail 23 including the 503 and Trail 22 from Nine Mile Shelter to the 302/22 intersection. Trail 19 has ground showing here and there, but completely passable. Out of the 80 Km or so on Trail 19 there may be 5 to 8 Km that are deemed passable. I got a message from Jacob on Monday morning who was running the #2 groomer from Bass River to the Nepisiguit Lodge: The trails are not bad but not great, there’s bare spots here and there, no water so that’s good, but snow is slim, pretty smooth for the most part other then the bad places like along the train track to east is very rough and there’s no snow to work with but that’s really only spot that’s bad, above the lodge is pretty good going, and down to the 360 is good. I met a nice couple from Ontario this morning at the 360 coming from Host and they had nothing but good things to say other then there’s moguls but Brice is leaving at 3 to go fix that up, trail base is very hard other than the layer on top from us cutting it and flattening it out. From Brice last night from the Host to the Lodge on the #2 groomer basically said the same as what Jacob noted, but noted a doable section west of the Little River Bridge.

Everything above the Lodge on 23 and 22 was V Good to excellent. The #1 did all the main trails west of the lodge. To summarize it comes down to we need more snow in places on the lower sections towards Bathurst from the Nepisiguit Lodge and Ron is saying that until this happens we may be just grooming as far as the Little River Bridge. From that point going West we will be grooming as usual. There doesn’t appear to be much snow in the forecast, but things can change. I’m sure other clubs in the province are experiencing the same and some much worse as noted on the NBFSC grooming map showing a lot of trails indicating orage (7 days since last groomed).

I was speaking with Alyre at Serpentine Lodge multiple times over the past few days and he says everything is good on Trail 23 to his venue. However, he was saying that the Candy Cane Trail into Mount Carleton is almost “toast”. The Chaleur club north of us has been out on their trails as well, so all is not lost. The Miramichi groomer was up to Nepisiguit on Trail 52. The Tracadie groomer was over on Trail 23 as far as our intersection along Route 360. The Caraquet groomer was also on Trail 19 towards our trail at Bass River as well. It looks like this quadrant of NB still has some decent sledding to be had.