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March 31 Longlac Ride


Techdenis007

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We'll we got to do this ride today... didn't think it was going to happen, but it did.

 

My wife and I were to meet up with Matt17 at Mooseland, to leave there for 9am, and we did just that, right on schedule. Basing from there gave us the advantage of not having to worry about fuel  (although we had our Lin-Q tanks anyways), and a shorter ride since it was a return trip day.

 

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Cold morning to start, -15 ish ... trails hard and fast. A couple of little stops to check sliders and scratchers, temps getting up due to hard trail conditions. Made a clicker adjustment on the 03 Rev to get the rpms down a bit, and a quick suspension adjustment too.  All the sleds had temps a bit above normal, but nothing a little off trail riding wouldn't fix.  Matt had plenty of opportunities to do just that, I'm glad he had the chance to play a bit.

 

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This is typical of the scenery along the pipeline sections.

 

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Once to Longlac, having never been there before by sled, once our destination for lunch had been decided, we headed over to Longlac Pizza and had yummy burgers and homemade fries. Some of us (them) also enjoyed a  soup and dessert.... 

 

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Fueled up the sleds and headed back towards home, with a bit more playing along the way... 

 

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this switchback is nasty when heading West ...

 

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On the West side of the Pagwa River facing East ...

 

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About 325 km for the day, bringing my total km's over 5000 for the season. Might even sneak in a couple more local rides :D

 

As luck would have it, we had our friends AC+YA father daughter team and another couple pop in as we were loading up the sleds, on their way to Longlac ... 

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Conditions look good. We got messed up @ Pagwa on on trip. Headed north up the road (having missed the trail west) rode a couple of miles before thinking, "I'm pretty sure the trail doesn't go this far north". Turn around & head back south. Turns out there was a small sign on cardboard pointing the way to Longlac stuck in the snowbank.

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Was a great day out.  A little less crust off the trail would have been nice for playing but otherwise great.  Was a pleasant surprise running into Scott and Paige at mooseland, I was going to run a few Kms south to check out the trail conditions but got a good report from Scott so I didn't have to go as far.  

31 minutes ago, revrnd said:

Conditions look good. We got messed up @ Pagwa on on trip. Headed north up the road (having missed the trail west) rode a couple of miles before thinking, "I'm pretty sure the trail doesn't go this far north". Turn around & head back south. Turns out there was a small sign on cardboard pointing the way to Longlac stuck in the snowbank.

 

On the return trip I just stayed on the pipeline to cross the Pagwa river.  Didn't want to subject my sled to more road running on the highway than necessary, I let Denis and Doris play on the pavement with their roller skis.  With the "hero" snow crust I wasn't worried about running the pipeline (and there were lots of other tracks).  Banks at the river were steep, I think I would have been fine in deeper/fresh snow, not sure how shorter tracks would fair.  

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4 minutes ago, matt17 said:

Was a great day out.  A little less crust off the trail would have been nice for playing but otherwise great.  Was a pleasant surprise running into Scott and Paige at mooseland, I was going to run a few Kms south to check out the trail conditions but got a good report from Scott so I didn't have to go as far.  

 

On the return trip I just stayed on the pipeline to cross the Pagwa river.  Didn't want to subject my sled to more road running on the highway than necessary, I let Denis and Doris play on the pavement with their roller skis.  With the "hero" snow crust I wasn't worried about running the pipeline (and there were lots of other tracks).  Banks at the river were steep, I think I would have been fine in deeper/fresh snow, not sure how shorter tracks would fair.  

 

The winter we rode thru there was a bunch of construction @ the bridge or pipeline made for tricky navigation.

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3 hours ago, gobills said:

Looks like a beauty of a day.  Polar Vortex is coming back at this rate you'll be sledding into may LOL

Back in the 90s, I drove 11 to TB after leaving Timmins in the spring. I remember seeing sled tracks in the ditch between Hearst & Longlac.

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3 hours ago, gobills said:

Looks like a beauty of a day.  Polar Vortex is coming back at this rate you'll be sledding into may LOL

 

The base isn't as deep as it looks... there are already patches of dirt showing up on some hill crests .... still rideable, but less good snow and hard & crusty surface. 

 

At 4:30 - 5 pm we could still ride on the ungroomed  crust without breaking through. Trail surface was still crusty all the way to the truck. 

 

Long sunny days will still wear it down, and with no new snow coming they won't be grooming around here. 

 

Hence why I bought the trailer....

 

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