The club’s early ride to Trout Lake turned out pretty well considering that the original forecast wasn't so great. The day of the ride was actually was pretty nice. The snow was real thin at the Atkisson Sno-Park, but was fine for vintage since just a little elevation made it much better. Before the road closure there are issues with 4X4's rutting out the trail. This year it went all the way to the Berryfields, so the deeper snow meant deeper ruts! They had to ride most of the places the extreme side of the road, to get away from the ruts, but in several places there was no way but to ride thru them.

Basically they had "hero snow" it was about 2-3 inches of new on top of hard snow. They were able to go off trail pretty good! We found the Surprise Lakes Snotel, and got a couple of pictures while there. They had to search for the snow depth gauge since it all looks different with all the small trees showing. Like the Snotel internet info reported, there was about 15" of snow at the gauge. With the small amount of snow at Atkisson, they decided not to take out the modern sleds from there the following day.

The forecast was for rain, so Paul decided he'd go home in the morning. Ed spoke with the lady that checked him in at the motel who showed him a better forecast for the next day, and sure enough, there was no rain in the morning. Ed decided to head to the Flattop Sno-Park to see how it looked. The 88 rd. was gated for logging as expected, but the other road out was open, and the snow was better there than Atkisson was. He put 20+ miles on the Summit just to make sure it was running well for the season. 

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