It’s 6:00 PM Friday night and Mark Franckowiak pulls into the Martin Rd parking lot at the head of the CJ Ramstad North Shore State trail. The North Shore of Lake Superior has been hit with a blizzard that started Tuesday night and finished up Thursday morning, dumping between one to three feet of snow over the trails and knocking down hundreds of trees. Since the storm, snowmobiles have already been flocking to the area and the Duluth Drift Toppers Snowmobile Club that Mark is a member of has been out cutting up trees on their trail system for two days. Mark is a heavy equipment operator by day and decided in 2019 that he needed to give back to the sport he loved so much and start doing his part to maintain the trails he enjoyed riding on for so many years. On Friday morning the Minnesota DNR had contacted Mark and told him that they wanted the club to do a groomer run that night. The Drift Toppers maintain the Duluth City East Trails and the Rice Lake Trail that are just a small part of the huge Grant-In-Aid trail system that makes up most of the 22,000 miles of trails in the state- but they are also contracted by the DNR to run the first 14 miles of the CJ Ramstad North Shore State Trail from the Martin Road Lot to the Reservoir Road where the Pequaywan Area Trail Blazers pick up the trail until Laine Rd., but the warm weather and lack of snow had suspended grooming operations for the last couple of weeks. This storm, however, had changed things dramatically. There was plenty of fresh snow but also a lack of a base or any packed trails, additionally there are huge snow drifts that would have to be contended with and scores of downed trees which would need to be removed. The club had been out Thursday and Friday clearing, packing and then grooming their club trails and the 2002 Tucker had already been getting a workout- but now the big task- the North Shore State Trail which runs north south and had been hit with the full force of the storm. Mark put out a note to the club who sent an E-mail out to the club members for a second groomer operator to go out on the trip and Josh Carlson answered the call.
Josh literally grew up in the Drift Toppers club- his dad, Mark, had been a member since the 1990s before there ever was a groomer shed and when the then 1990 Tucker groomer the club had at the time was parked across the street at his neighbors’ house. As a young boy Josh would watch out the window as his father climbed into the groomer and drove off and dreamed of the day that he could get into that big machine just like his dad. After years of hounding him, when Josh was 13, he finally convinced his dad to let him go on a grooming run with him and has been grooming the trails for 21 years since. The 1990 Tucker served the club faithfully for decades before the club raised enough money a few years ago to upgrade to a 2002.
When Mark found out that he was going to be riding with Josh he couldn’t be happier- not just because Josh has 21 years of experience but also because Josh is a giant bear of a guy that does the work of five normal human beings. Josh’s specialty is doing stuff that needs good old fashioned brute force and when it comes to moving trees he makes Paul Bunyan jealous. Likewise, Josh was thrilled that he was teaming up with Mark who knew more about the groomer mechanically than anyone else outside of Jeff BarBee the club’s head groomer mechanic who takes pride in volunteering his time to keep the 2002 Tucker in top operating condition.
Both men knew they had just volunteered for a long night, all of this after working their normal jobs all day, but they love what they do and even though grooming is a lot of work there is also the satisfaction of looking behind you and seeing that perfect flat white ribbon that you just laid out. They walk up to the Bob Klein maintenance shed where the groomer is stored. Bob passed away several years earlier but was an enormous part of the snowmobile community in Northeast Minnesota, having been the past club president and having been a part of MNUSA Region 7 for decades, he helped build a huge portion of the trails we all ride on today. The Drift Toppers Club is one of the oldest in the state and the very existence of sections of the North Shore State Trail can be traced back to the club’s founders. Bob was also the head mechanic on the old Tucker until his health prevented him from doing what he truly loved and when he passed, the club decided to name the maintenance shed in his honor.
Josh was sad to see the old Tucker go, having spent so many hours of his youth in it, but the volume of work that Tucker had to endure just became too much- at the peak of its use it ran the Duluth City East Trails on Wednesday Night, The Rice Lake Trail on Thursday night, the NSST on Friday and Saturday and the Rice Lake trail again on Sunday and then it spent Monday and Tuesday under the care of a group of mechanical surgeons making sure she would be ready to go again by Wednesday. Now the club has two groomers- the Tucker runs the City Trail and the North Shore Trail while the Rice Lake Trail duties are handled by a 2006 BR 180, that way the club can have their whole system done every weekend for all of the traffic that they get.
Mark and Josh get everything ready for the trip, they make sure the chainsaws are gassed up and ready to go and check to make sure all of the equipment is working the way it should. Once the Tucker is warmed up they head out onto the NSST. Mark will drive on the way up and Josh will take over on the way back, this will make Josh the primary tree mover on the way up- his specialty. As soon as they cross Martin Rd they face their first obstacle- a series of open fields. The North Shore Trail runs north and south and the 50 mile an hour winds have been blowing from east to west across the trail leaving behind snow drifts that are three to five feet high. Grooming is a science- you can’t just pull a drag behind you and call it good. Mark knows this but it is the first run after a major winter storm and they are going to try to set it up the best they can, for now the goal is to just get rid of the rolling drifts and at least get the trail flat. Mark lowers the blade on the Tucker in order to cut through the drifts and fill in the troughs between them but this will create another problem- soft snow between the hard snow compacted in the drifts that hasn’t been packed yet is susceptible to being dug out by the tracks of passing snowmobiles and over time that leads to mogul formation. To combat this, Mark uses a combination of the blade of the Tucker and skilled driving to try to compact the trough snow as much as possible- it is a skill he has developed over time both as an equipment operator and groomer, one that can only be learned by doing and trial and error – everything on the groomer is that way, from where to set the blade height on the drag to the speed you need to travel to get the perfect groom, it takes a lot of skill and knowledge of snow and the learning curve is pretty steep, but these guys know what they are doing. There is definitely a difference in groom quality between veterans and rookies and tonight the Drift Toppers have two of their best operators out there.
After pounding through the massive drifts, the first few miles of the trail go relatively smooth as volunteer club members had gone out earlier that day to get rid of some of the trees. The DNR had not been able to make it all the way down the trail to Duluth clearing the trail, so that task has now fallen on the shoulders of the club. After they get past the first few miles that the club members had cleared on their snowmobiles, they come to a virtual tree apocalypse- massive white pines and spruces that have fallen across the trail, partially buried in the snow. If the trees are laying across the trail, Mark can easily grab them with the blade and lift them up and push them off to the side, but if they are in line with the groomer they tend to ride up the blade and want to impale the two guys in the cab so Josh gets out and starts cutting. Mark jumps out and starts tossing branches off to the side while Josh moves the trunks. Progress is painfully slow- ten feet and there’s another monster, twenty feet, another monster then trees piled on top of each other- snowmobilers have gone around a lot of these trees but these guys have to make sure it is clear going the whole way. Josh is getting worn out so they start switching off- if the tree is more on the passenger side Josh gets out- more on the driver’s side and Mark gets out for the real big ones they both get out. The snow is knee to waist deep around these trees and they are getting soaked both in sweat and melting snow when they climb back in the cab. The deep snow under the trees create a new problem- there hasn’t been any snowmobiles running over that area to pack it down and now the groomer has to do the work, and if they aren’t careful with their pack, the drag can hit an area of deep unpacked snow and get stuck.
Eleven miles in they come to a bridge, they get half way across it and suddenly the groomer dies and they are left sitting on the bridge in the darkness. There is a smell of something burning. This is big trouble- they are completely blocking the bridge and there is no way around the groomer- if they can’t get it moving again, the NSST from here to Duluth will be instantly closed. The two men grab flashlights and start checking things out, Josh is at a complete loss, but Mark follows his nose and starts pulling off panels and sees that some ignition wires have frayed and shorted out and started a mini electrical fire that quickly went out. He moves some things around, tapes some things up and cranks over the ignition- the groomer fires back up and the two celebrate- but their joy quickly gets subdued as they realize they have lost their heater and a portion of their lights but the groomer is still running and functioning. There are three miles left to go until they turn around so they decide they will press on.
They keep going down the trail and run into a lone snowmobiler heading south. They stop and let the guy pass, he gives them a wave and a thumbs up and when he gets past the groomer he proceeds to the middle of the ribbon they just laid own and punches it, leaving a big trench in what they just got done grooming, Josh spits out a flurry of four letter words. “Some people just don’t get it,” replies Mark.
They grind their way forward and come across even more trees, they are both soaked from the snow but now when they climb back in the cab there is no heat and the outside temperature is only 12 degrees. What was once cold wet clothing now becomes cold ice covered clothing. They get to the turn around and switch drivers, now it is just a matter of getting back to Duluth yes it’s just 14 miles but at groomer speed and a fuel stop they’ve got over two hours left without any heat.
The trip back is uneventful, but by the time they roll into the shed at just past 1:00 AM both men are freezing. Mark is frozen to the core and can’t wait to get into his car for heat and then into a warm shower to bring his body temp back up. Josh is covered in icicles and looks like a giant frozen Yeti, over the years he’s had trips like this before and just wants to go home and get some sleep. Overall the 28 mile round trip took them almost 7 hours.
In the morning Mark returns to the shed and fixes the wiring problem on the groomer and at 6:00 PM Saturday night Mark and Josh climb back into the Tucker for another grooming run. The night will go much smoother with the trails well used and packed down during the day and the Saturday night run only takes three and a half hours. On Sunday morning trailers arriving in the Martin Road Parking Lot are treated to a pristine 14 miles of trail courtesy of The Drift Toppers Snowmobile Club and their volunteers.