Folks,
We plan to do this race at this time, looks good as of January 3rd!
Permits are secured.

I have checked the Ice on New Years day and on Thursday evening January 3rd.
Happy to say ice gained an inch with the cold weather blast on Jan 1 and 2nd.
While there is 16 inches toward the middle of the Lake out from Ernies, there is now about 17.5 inches along and out to about 800 feet from shore.
The track will be planned to go East by North East along the shoreline and inside of the fish houses that are out there.
Going in this direction will help with safety as the typical direction has been toward the middle of the lake and now with snow there is a lot of snowmobile travel and ice fishing traffic on the middle of the lake, along with two lighted trails that are being used.

There is about 10 to 18 inches of snow on the lake depending where you are at.
I also seen the water level at the ice level when drilling.
That is actually getting better with the ice getting thicker.
We have secured 2 snow blowers to get the snow back from the track and parking areas and will plow as much as we can to shore.
A big thanks to Nisswa Marine of Nisswa and Lano Equipment of Ramsey, Shakopee, and Loretto for their help on this.
We are also working with Tom's Backhoe out of Brainerd to get equipment hauled with a trail groomer for working on banks.

Lot of weight on the ice right now, so it is imperative we blow it back and keep the weight off the track and parking areas.
If the forecast is correct, I don't see it impacting the conditions, and anticipate that we will still add an inch of ice in the next week based on only 8 hours of daylight and night temps below freezing.

We will decide if we do one or two tracks when we start moving snow and shaving.
The turnout at the first race is usually lower, so I don't see this as an issue if need be.

Stacy will do a post on Facebook to see who plans to attend, so respond to her on this if you would.

let me know if you have questions.
Thanks!
Ron