On January 25th, from 3am to midnight, about 2 feet of snow blanketed the trails and grounds of Maplelag. I don't know if I have ever witnessed this big of snowfall here in Minnesota. It was pretty impressive. The wind was out of the east around 10-20mph, causing some drifting here and there but not the big drifts like a NW wind. Another nice feature of this storm was that there was no big winds after the storm. The next day, the 26th, it was relatively calm and the woods were flocked beautifully with snow. We had a few guests from the weekend that opted to stay an extra night and wait for the roads to clear. Scroll down for some photos from the two days. A big photo album for a big storm.
January 27th. View towards the north tower between two flocked spruce trees.
January 26th at 10:30 am on the side of Sukkerbusk in a protected area. The stick measures 28 inches of snow. There was 6-8 inches on the ground before the storm. Give or take a few inches of settling over night and the snowfall was probably around 2 feet!!!
January 26th. We saw the sun briefly this morning. The rock wall was covered with snow for the first time and everything around the lodge was white.
January 25th. Jennifer Ristau was one of the guests who opted to stay a extra night. Here she is enjoying the fresh snow on Lucky's Loype.
January 26th. No school for the kids. A afternoon of fun in the snow. If Jens was a unit of measurement, you could say we received a "Jens" of snow.
January 26th. This section of trail was the last to get groomed the day before. (about 5:30 pm) There was 10" here the next morning.
January 26th. Grooming on Sukkerbusk. The east facing sides of trees were covered with snow. It was hard to concentrate grooming sometimes. I felt like I was in a dream.
January 26th. Lots of big piles of snow for the kids to play on now.
January 26th. A car covered in snow near the Brant cabin. The snow was pretty light and dry so everyone was able to get out just fine. We had our road plowed three times during the storm to keep things clear.
January 26th. A path in the snow leading to the stairs to the wax room. First time we have seen this in the new lodge.
January 25th. PB and Ginzu taking a short break from grooming as snow was coming down hard in front of the lodge.
January 25th. Grooming through the skinny field. The snow was almost to the top on the rear part of the tracks.
January 25th. It didn't take long for the snow to cover the tracks. I don't know if I have seen berms like this on the sides on our trails. Wild.
January 25th. Between the compactor bar and rear of the tracks. Tons of snow.
January 25th. Jim on the Pisten Bully. Jim was running the PB and I was running the Ginzu/snowmobile.
January 25th. Start of Bullhead lake trail near the top of Suicide Hill.
January 25th. Suicide Hill. The wind was from the east most of the day so the snow came off the lake and deposited on the hill. There was close to 20" of snow when I was grooming here. It is going to take lots of passes to compact all the new snow here.
January 25th. PB back in the "cathouse" after a hard days work. After the day it reminded me of those freaky looking characters from Lord of the Rings with all the odd shaped icicles hanging around it.
