Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
GOGEBIC COUNTY Fairgrounds' half-mile oval track had six inches of ice on Friday. Tom Auvinen and a crew are running two trucks, when weather permits, to lay ice for snowmobile races on Dec. 30 and Jan. 7-8. The desirable depth is 10 inches of ice, so they have one week and a pending cold snap to get four more inches of ice formed before next Friday's vintage racers begin their practice runs.
IRONWOOD - As Ironwood gears up for an influx of snowmobile racers for the next few weeks, Tom Auvinen and crew are busy making ice and preparing the track.
Without the ice-makers and hay bale layers, there would be no racing in Ironwood, but for Auvinen and crew, they are fine with the racers receiving all the attention.
Next Saturday, Dec. 31, between 9a.m. and 4 p.m., vintage racers will ascend to race on the historic half-mile oval at the Gogebic County Fairgrounds.
On Jan. 7-8, the Ironwood Snowmobile Olympus races, constituting round two of the TLR Cup Tour, take place between 9 a.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday. The best oval racers in the world are expected to be there.
On Friday, Dec. 30, the track will be open and free to the public as the vintage sled racers get in practice sessions on the ice from 1 to 4 p.m. A vintage sled is a pre-1985 model, but do not make the mistake of thinking they are slow. Vintage sleds go well over 100 mph and last year's winner was registered at 135 mph.
Between now and next Friday, Auvinen and the crew will set 2,500 hay bales around the track for safety purposes and stay up late at night making ice. When it is snowing, they are unable to make ice, as snow leads to crystallization.
During warm temperature periods like the past week, the ice is made in the middle of the night when temperatures are at their lowest.
Ideally, the track needs 10 inches of solid ice for the races, but racers have competed on as few as 6 inches in the past when weather conditions would not allow more ice to be made.
The city of Ironwood cuts the snowmobile Olympus a deal on water, freeing Auvinen and his dedicated crew to drive two trucks around the oval, dispersing water whenever temperatures allow.
When the temperatures are below 10 degrees, they can run both trucks continuously, laying a fine sheet of ice on the half-mile track.
The larger truck is a 3,000-gallon red beauty and the other is a 1,500-gallon fine-tuned, blue ice-laying machine.
During warm weather, only the smaller truck runs because it has a much finer sprayer and the mist enables the water to freeze before another pass around the track.
All told, the trucks can spray 10 loads of water per shift and a shift is typically four hours long.
The track is currently sitting at 6.5 inches of ice, so between today and next Friday, they need need to make an additional 4 inches, which Auvinen felt confident would occur with the pending colder weather heading Ironwood's way.
