Once I got past the first section, the trails were typical Woodford... well groomed and in good shape. They are a bit bumpy because the rock-hard base is a bit bumpy. But with 4-5" of fresh wet snow from Friday Night, the handling was predictable and fast. I headed up 7N all the way to Kelly Stand before taking a break. Trails were bumpy due to the wet snow, but not real bad. Traffic was somewhat light. While I was sitting at Kelly Stand near the Weenie Wagon, I watched a guy and his wife head north on their Yamahas. After a few minutes I headed North, and was happy to see them parked at a corner. I was glad that I was going to be able to ride ahead of them. No such luck. Just as I was about to pass them, they decided to take off from their parked position without looking behind them, and I almost ran them over. For the next half mile I followed along at a lovely 7 mph pace until we came up to a guy on a new Rev who found a deep sink hole on the right side of the trail. The Yamahas and myself stopped. The Yamaha guy and myself walked over to the sled. They were chatting about throttle this, pull that, blah blah blah. While they were chatting, I lifted the back of his ski doo out of the hole and set it on the trail. Once they realized that the sled was out of the hole, they just put one guy on a ski while the other drove it out. Fortunately, I was able to go ahead of the Yamahas and the Ski Doo and continue my ride. The trails north of the 710 intersection were in good shape and as usual, were a lot of fun to ride. I rode up to BN45, which is just a bit north of Rt 11-30. At that point I was at my 50 mile mark and decided to turn around. The trails were in good shape the whole way up, except for a couple random sink holes, and a lot of open ground along the sides of the trails that in some cases made the trails a bit narrow. It's a shame that the trail around Rt 11-30 is so narrow. I don't recall the trail being like that in the past. Perhaps a land owner caused the re-routing of the trail? Crossing 11-30 is dangerous because when you're heading south because there's only 1 small path over the snowbank on the south side of the crossing, and you may be smack in the middle of the highway when a sled pops up in your way.
Anyway, heading back down, just within site of the parking lot at BN31, I ran into a ski doo who had run out of gas. It was a bit of a tough situation, because I basically had just enough gas to get home, and I forgot to hit an ATM the day before, so I had no cash to go fill up at Jenks. We decided that I'd tow him a couple hundred yards to the parking lot, then give him a ride back to his truck. Fortunately, after I towed him to the lot, a guy showed up who had a couple gallons of gas. I followed the rider to Jenks where he filled his sled, and was also kind enough to fill mine for me. Once I left Jenks, I headed home to find that my oil light had started to flicker on bumps while going over Kelly Stand Rd. I knew I should have topped off the tank! I checked my oil level and decided that I had plenty of oil left, so I continued home. Airport road had gotten pretty bumpy by this time in the afternoon. The ride home was a typical Saturday afternoon ride with all the bumps that you'd expect with that warm March sun. Traffic was a bit light, which helped preserve the trails somewhat.
All in all I pulled into my garage with 100.8 miles and an oil light that still hadn't come on steady. It was a good ride, and likely will be my last big weekend ride of the year. With the warmer temps here, chances are I'll be sticking to night riding for the rest of the season. I'm right at my goal of 1500 total miles for the season, and about 70 miles shy of putting 1,500 miles on my Crossfire for the season. This week I should be able to get those last 70 miles on the Crossfire, which will also put its total milage at 2,000 miles. Not bad for a sled that I bought new last March.
