NorthernDestinations.com

4-9-2024 ATV Trails and Road Routes Open This Weekend

The ATV trails and road routes open this weekend. Usually the trails don’t open until about the 1st of May. That is when they expected to open the road routes on the county roads. Thanks to the ElNino winter they are all opening almost a month early.

MARINETTE COUNTY FORESTRY DEPARTMENT
Phone 715-732-7525 FAX 715-732-7533
PRESS RELEASE
Date: April 9, 2024
To: Peshtigo Times
Eagle-Herald
Green Bay Press Gazette
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
The Daily News-Iron Mountain
Florence Mining News
Chamber of Commerce
Marinette County Snowmobile/ATV Club Presidents
From: Ryan Bourassa, Forestry Administrator
Subject: Motorized Recreation Trails & County Road Routes Opening in Marinette County Wisconsin
Marinette County would appreciate you informing your subscribers and/or members of the below information.
The Marinette County motorized recreational trail system will re-open to all authorized motorized vehicles effective 12 am, Friday, April 12th, 2024. Motorized recreational trails are being re-opened now that conditions exist which can support motorized traffic without damage to the trail.
In addition, all Marinette County Road Routes will be opening at dawn on Friday, April 12th, 2024

RJB

4-3-2024 Storm Followup

This is cross posted from The Big Snow Page..

Greetings and welcome!

The storm didn’t go as expected but it sure is a mess. As of 11:30pm last night when the snow stopped I had 4.5” of absolutely cement snow. Your two stage snowblower is totally useless, and my little Honda paddle blowers will struggle for sure.
My white pine in the back yard is so loaded down with snow that it looks like a weeping willow.
Once the storm got rolling it was dropping very wet heavy snow really fast. I had to go and clean off my Starlink dish no less than 4 times. It has a heater that melts snow, but it couldn’t keep up. Each time that I went out there I cleared at least an inch of near slush snow.
The snow stopped around midnight as dry air mixed into the storm and created a dry slot. When I see that dry slot I know that the storm is weakening and don’t expect a lot more snow. Since then we have had an inch or two of much finer snow.
The wind has been a huge factor. It has been howling all night, and still is. I don’t know if we got to 55mph but I’m sure that it was 40+ many times. I heard it hit the house hard quite a few times overnight. It is still blowing around snow in huge clouds.
The wind and heavy snow conspired to take down a lot of trees and tree branches. Here at the house (near Caldron Falls Flowage and Fisher’s Camp) we had the power go off for a few seconds and come back on at least ten times. We were some of the lucky ones.
There were transformer or power line fires in Crivitz across the bridge from Riverside and on Moonshine Hill Rd and Camp 5 Rd.

This storm has been a huge disaster for the power company (WPS). At one point they had over 62,000 customers out of power. When I checked a few minutes ago they were down to 56K.

Those guys are heros. They are out there in 40+mph winds with driving snow sandblasting them cutting trees and restoring power lines. The ugly part is that thousands of those power outages are only a handful of people. If it is only ¼ of the outages that would still be 15,000 individual restoration jobs. Golly.
Here are some power outage numbers..

County-
marinette 13,273
oconto 5,853
forest 410

Town-
crivitz 485
middle inlet 507
silver cliff 149
stephenson 1,502
wausaukee 757
Total: (As of 8am) 56,914

There were also some road closures due to downed power lines and trees. They shut down W in Crivitz for the fire across the river from Riverside Bar. Hwy 180 got shut down in Porterfield, and Hwy 41 got shut down in Peshtigo. You know if they are shutting down state highways there are some ugly conditions.

The good news is that once they get the roads plowed any salt that they use will be very effective.
A couple of things bug me about storms like this. First, if this would have come in January the wet sloppy cement snow would have made a base that we could have ridden for weeks or months.
The one that really gets me is the fleeting nature of it. I think of all of those people that struggled to get home, stayed in dark cold houses, fixed power lines in brutal conditions, crashed their car, struggled to shovel, or otherwise had a hellish time of it. In a few days the only evidence of those struggles will be some downed trees or tree branches. In two days it will be 50 and sunny and in four days, 60 and sunny.
My official snow total is estimated at 6-7”, with 4-5 of that wet heavy cement snow. With 40mph+ winds blowing it around I never will have a solid number.
RJB Over & Out.

Wednesday November 29th, 2023

Greetings and welcome!

This is my last post here for a while. I am moving over to the Big Snow Page for the winter.

The week before deer hunting was warmer than usual. There were days that almost got up to 60. The week of deer hunting it cooled off to more normal temperatures in the 40s.

The last weekend of deer hunting a big cold front came through and gave us about 1-1.5″ of snow. More importantly it dropped temperatures significantly. Monday and Tuesday of this week had high temperatures of just 22 or 23 and low temps around 10. That will go a long way toward freezing the ground and the lakes.

Today we got back up to the low 40s, and expect pretty normal temperatures for the short term.

The church on Hwy C in Silver Cliff right across from Jungle Jim’s and Mountain Jed’s is for sale for $200K. The town was considering buying it for a new town hall. There was an informational walk through last night and possibly a vote. I don’t know how that worked out. One of the items in the notice said that it was subject to the financing of the new safety building going through.

Deer hunting week was pretty quiet as far as they go. Some people got deer, some people got really nice deer, and some people got skunked. Overall the DNR said that harvest numbers were down about 10%.

Me? To quote an old friend.. I have a deal with the deer. They don’t go into the tavern and I don’t go into the woods. We are still arguing about the roads.

Now we go into that very quiet time between deer hunting and when the snowmobile trails open up. A lot of bars and restaurants have limited hours, and in the case of Jungle Jim’s, they are closing until December 27th. I can’t blame them, it gets pretty quiet. It is a tough little stretch for bars, restaurants, and other tourism based businesses.

December 1st Marinette County shuts down ATV/UTV access to county roads. They re-open on May 1st. Oconto Co closed ATV trails Nov 1st.

The Marinette Co trails north of Brandywine remain open. Those only close for spring thaw.

That’s news for today. Come visit me on The Big Snow Page over the winter.

Have a good one and thank you for visiting!!

RJB

Friday 11-17-2023

Greetings and welcome!

It is the Friday of gun deer hunting season and busy or not I need to do a few updates.

First I have been a busy boy so I haven’t been able to update for a few weeks. Between all of the trips to the doctors, a huge water damage repair in my kitchen and laundry room, and fall chores, I haven’t had time to take a breath.

Anyway..

We have an unusual setup for deer hunting this year.

First of all the ground is not frozen and with all of the recent rain low spots will be wet. There is no snow on the ground at all. The last few days have been close to 60ºF.

Yesterday was a nice day that came with high winds that peaked over 40mph. We had a cold front come through last night and the wind just roared. The cold front dropped the temperatures from almost 60 yesterday to an expected high of 40 or so for today. There is going to be a lot of energy involved with a change like that, and this time it came as a lot of wind and very little snow or rain. That wind is expected to stick around with gusts today and Saturday getting up to 20mph.

We had another windy day like that recently too. Don’t be surprised to see a few dead branches or trees down.

High temperatures over the weekend look pretty normal with a high of 41 today, 49 Saturday, and 42 Sunday. Overnight temperatures are expected to be in the mid to upper 20s.

As far as the deer forecast I’d put it at better than average. This year the season comes earlier than usual. I have no idea where they are in the  progression of the rut, but back when I hunted usually the early season was good for us.

Usually I would not hunt on days with big winds. The deer don’t like having three of their senses taken away. Their eyes are very attuned to spot motion. With big wind the whole woods is in motion. Their typical scent scenarios go out the window too in a 40mph wind. Likewise the roar in the trees takes away some of their hearing. They are nervous and spooky in conditions like that, and typically don’t move as much.

In spite of all of that I saw at least six different groups of deer last night on the way home from Crivitz a little before sunset.

In my travels it seems like the deer population in general is up a little bit. As far as buck sightings, those are way up with at least 4 nice ones in the past couple of weeks.

There was a pretty nice one on the east end of Silver Cliff that still walks because of my anticipation and cat-like reflexes. He ran across the road a ways in front of me, and I was like, “Nice buck..”. At the last second he suddenly changed directions and ran back across the road and about five feet in front of the car. I got a good look at him, and any hunter would be proud of him.

Don’t be surprised to see some black bears. It has been warm out so they are not hibernating yet.

There is a hunter’s bake sale at Nimrod supper club in Athelstane today that benefits the local VFD.

For Thanksgiving the usual restaurants will be putting out their best buffets. Rapids Resort, Hilltop Resort, Nimrod’s, and so on. Rustic is doing a potluck where they supply turkey and ham and the rest is potluck. Interesting.

The late season looks cold. There is a little snow showing up in the forecast for about Tuesday night. Next Wednesday and Thursday could have high temps only in the 20s, with lows in the teens.

As far as dem Packers, they play Sunday at noon against the Chargers, and again on Thanksgiving at Detroit. Sunday’s game starts at noon and Thursday’s game at 11:30. Plenty of places will be running Packer specials.

As far as traffic, that has been picking up since early this week. I had plenty of company on my way home from Green Bay yesterday afternoon.

A little story about that. One year I traveled out of Milwaukee with the masses at about suppertime Friday night. Left about 6, got to Rapids Resort at about 11. Traffic sucked the whole way and it was a 5 hour ride instead of the usual three. The next year I left at 8pm and still got to Rapids at about 11, but with a lot less traffic stress. Lesson learned.

One last item, gas prices are down a little this week. Locally it was $3.09 yesterday. In Green Bay it was as low as $2.99. Not great, but it could be a lot worse.

That’s it for me today. Have a good weekend, have fun, and be safe.

RJB