Thursday April 4th, 2013
Greetings and welcome!
We are slowly making the transition from winter to mud season. Winter isn’t quite done with us, but the sun is getting hot, so it is melting down sunny spots. The last 500′ of the driveway is a mud bog, but the shadowed spots still have 4″ of ice.
It will be an ugly frost-out and mud season this year with all of the snow and ice built up. I think that I counted 6 times over the winter that we had a big rain storm that soaked into the snow and froze. While that is very exciting news for whitewater enthusiasts, it will be a little messy for the rest of you, and it will probably take more than a few weeks to melt off.
Winter has not loosened its grip on the river, so we will not be starting spring rafting on the Peshtigo River with Kosir’s this weekend (4/6). Next weekend looks like a pretty good bet.
The melting cycle has been a very slow one. The days get into the 40s and sunny and the snow gets slushy, then night time temps freeze it all back up.
Very little of it has hit the river yet. Once it does we should have some outstanding whitewater for the last couple of weeks of April and into May. Some has been soaking in, which is fine, that gives us a bigger base flow later in the spring.
We really are in for a good spring on the river. If you have ever been dragging your raft across the rocks, come and see what it is really about. The third and fourth weekend in April should be big.
The river should get started waking up next week. There is a little rain in the forecast and we might get above 50 for a change. The watershed for the Pesh runs past Goodman Park and up almost to Crandon. They had a good winter up there and are still snowmobiling. In an extremely rare move, Marinette Co kept the snowmobile trails open a week past the usual March 31 closure date.
I am going to suggest that with the enormous ice base and the slow spring thaw that we might not see the ATV trails open up the first weekend in May like they usually do. It is just a prediction, but those might open a week or two late depending on conditions.
Winter isn’t quite done with us yet, and we could see another snow storm this weekend. The forecast models have been pretty consistent about it bringing us snow until this morning’s version, which has it switching over to rain mid-day Saturday with a little snow to finish.
After the weekend the two week reach of the model shows an active pattern with a couple of rain storms and some warmer weather. I think that is when we will see thing start getting a little messy with the mud, and really big on the rivers.
We have a couple of events coming up this weekend. This is the poster for the Town of Stephenson VFD fundraiser..
The Hidden Bear ATV Club is having a fun day this Saturday to raise money to sign the Town of Riverview roads to make ATVs and UTVs legal..
HIDDEN BEAR ATV CLUB – FUN DAY
SATURDAY APRIL 6, 2013 1pm – 6pm
Riverview Town Hall, 15408 Highway 32, Mountain, WI
(Just North of the Halfway Bar)
Meat Raffles – 50/50 Raffles – Food – Beverages – Chili – FUN
$2 Cans of Beer
Proceeds from this event to offset the cost of ATV signs that will be needed to open all Riverview Town Roads for ATV/UTV Travel beginning May 1st, 2013
**** Come Enjoy ****
I usually take a little time off from blogging once the snowmobile trails close, but I doubt that I will stay away long this year. April offers some great prospects for the rafting.
For now have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB