Snow Departing

On Sunday I got a phone call from a neighbor who wanted me to find a snowmobile parked somewhere on the snowmobile trail near the Voyageur Point Road. On Saturday our neighbor had gotten struck on a small lake near the edge of the Boundary Waters and had to leave their snowmobile until Monday when they planned to retrieve it. Some winter campers who were inside the BWCAW fishing for Lake Trout over the weekend had been told that the sled belonged to someone living on Poplar Lake and decided to help. They managed to free the sled using ropes, brought it out to the Gunflint Trail and managed to contact the owners to tell them where it was parked. Sometimes it can pay to leave the keys in a stuck snowmobile.
I took the sled over the snowmobile trail back to its owner. We have had night temperatures above freezing for several days and the snow is going fast. Some spots on the snowmobile trail were bare and my guess is that unless we get some new snow that snowmobiling will be dropping off.
The snow melt is almost a month early this year. The best thing about the early melt is that I can store my repaired snow blower. I won't use a snow blower on our gravel driveway unless we have a packed snow base. What snow we still have is settling fast and the willows near our mailbox are starting to bud -- snow season can't last much longer!