My wife and I headed up to Ashland this past weekend with some other couples for a weekend of riding. It was severly cold, but we were all very prepared for the weather and didn’t come out too bad. I have a little frostbite on my face, but that was the extend of the cold in the group. I carried two pairs of extra socks and four extra face masks so that we could swap them out as they got full of moisture (snot) and froze.
There was great lake effect snow conditions north of HWY 2 towards Cornacopia and Hebert. The trails were in excellent condition in the northern tip with some areas that still had some fresh undisturbed powder to ride in. We rode about 160 miles on Saturday and got about 35 miles in on Sunday morning before cutting the Sunday trip short with a jack shaft bearing going out on an Artic Cat. It was pretty tough to get the sleds turning over on Sunday morning as they were nearly froze solid. I went to top the anti-freeze off on my wife’s sled and the jug of 50/50 mix antifreeze in my truck was froze nearly solid.
We actually had some issues with all of the sleds overheating occasionally because the trails were soo froze down. Even in the sub-zero temperatures, you still have to pull off and get some powder on the heat exchangers.
There are still a lot of guys heading out riding that are driving like idiots. A lot of the corners are very icy causing some pretty close calls even with the limited amount of sled activity this past weekend.
A noticed a few things this weekend so I thought I should post a couple reminders.
1. Expect another sled to meet you at every corning along the trail.
2. Do not stop an park on the trail when you are on corners or bottom of hills.
3. When you do pull off and take a break, pull over one behind each other and not side by side across the trail.
I get pretty protective of common sense when I am leading a group of riders that consists of my wife. It is not always the young bucks that are out there driving senseless as I laid an 
chewing to a couple guys that were in their 40’s. You can ride hard, but if you don’t ride smart, you should just stay home.
I’ll post some pictures when a bit later. Dispite the bitterly cold temps, it was a great weekend to ride if you were prepared for it.