Our cottage has a 1.5 km+ driveway and it is just not worth paying someone to keep it open in the winter so we pay the neighbor $150 a year and he keeps the first 20 or 30 yards blown out so i can back the truck and trailer in and we than snowmobile in. Works great but arriving Friday night around 8 pm it was pretty nibbly out:
There had been a whack of snow since i last rode the driveway 3 weeks earlier and it was all super light fluff. Result being in order to see i had to stand while riding in order to see over the plume i was kicking up in front of the machine. Compound that with my stubborn refusal to wear a visor (I just don't like it and feel like it impairs my ability to see particularly my peripheral vision) and the 20 minutes it took to load up and get going plus than ride in and you look like this when you arrive:
Got up at 6 am Saturday morning to check the temp and this is what it was reading at my kitchen window:
Was up with my wife and son this weekend and while not softies by any stretch i knew that temp was gonna go over like a lead balloon so went back to bed and waited until noon to head out. By that time it was -16 but breezy so the wife said she was staying in the cottage and would happily tend the wood stove for the day. My son though was up for it. We put on at Wade's Landing at bottom of Fish Bay and rode 16 km along the south shore towards Cross Point. Visibility was crap and it was windy and there was deep snow for the last 8 km once we left the outfitter's road. Snow depth varied from rare patches of bare ice once in a while to being 12 to 18 inches most of the time. This was mixed up with many small deeper drifts and occasional 2 and 3 foot drifts and multiple sections of slush. Due to the slush i kept my speed at a minimum 60 km/hour - made for a bumpy rough ride with multiple occasions where the 750 lb Skandic with 400 lbs of rider plus a 200+ lb toboggan were all airborne. Got set up and as expected it was pretty slow with the cold but avoided the skunk with 3 walleye - no keepers.
Sunday the temps were much more to my wife's liking and we all headed out right after breakfast. Snowing off and on all day but very little wind and the slush conditions seemed to have improved a little. Only headed 12 km this time as was a little paranoid about my wife's ability to ride out in the dark at speeds sufficient to manage the slush. She did fine though - told her to keep up with me and not to stop which she did quite handily. All set:
Fishing was much better and managed a whack like this:
[
and this:
No keepers on the walleye side but did manage a feed of Jumbos. Next trip scheduled for the 17 to 20th. Until than.
South Shore Outing - Nibbly
