‍Meeting called to order

by Dick Pebler, president, at 7:40 p.m. at the warming house at the Blue Hills Trail

Attendance

Officers: Dave Olsen, Tom Paulsen, Dick Pebler

Members: Steve Gest, Jonathan Stanley

Non-members: Dan Bartels, Adam Brockman, Jesse Wimer

Objectives

Meeting with groomers to prepare for upcoming winter season.

Grooming Issues

Our grooming team for this winter includes Dan Bartels, Adam Brockman, Steve Gest, Jay Howard, Tom Paulsen, Jonathan Stanley, and Jesse Wimer.  Steve Brockman has retired.

Dan Bartels is our most experienced groomer, and will provide significant leadership, and continued management of grooming related mechanical problems.  Steve Gest will take on more of a leadership role, especially on weekdays when Dan Bartels is working elsewhere.  Jesse Wimer has been recruited to start grooming this winter.  With Jesse's reputed mechanical skills, we want him to receive as much experience as possible -- hoping he will become a major part of our grooming team in the future.  Jay Howard has many hours available, and will probably function as fourth in line for grooming hours.  Adam Brockman (available many evenings and weekends) will help fill the gaps.  Tom Paulsen and Jonathan Stanley will remain available for limited backup grooming.  During the ski season, we will create a weekly calendar for availability of our groomers.

Our goal remains quality grooming of the entire trail system with major emphasis on the Eastside core loop, and the Eastside perimeter trails.  In the interest of saving some time and money, we will probably avoid grooming a few short trail sections (34A-33A; 34-15; 12-13).

Either Dan Bartels or Jesse Wimer will take responsibility for regularly fueling the snowmobiles.  Perhaps Jesse will carry the gas caddy, with plans to fill the snowmobile gas tanks and the four 5-gallon containers in time for Dan Bartel's weekend grooming.

Groomer safety was discussed.  For safety reasons, our goal is for nighttime grooming to be done as a team rather than alone.  The use of the GPS rescue device (FindMeSPOT) was briefly reviewed.

Taking into consideration the creation of two new trails on the Eastside, grooming patterns were prepared by Tom Paulsen.  Those in attendance suggested a couple of changes to help avoid difficult corners.  Tom Paulsen will create the laminated maps for groomers' use.  Obviously, these routes are a work in progress -- and each trail grooming requires timely route decisions by the leader that day.

We discussed the purchase of new grooming equipment.  We will order a Classic Track Renovator for use on our small G2 (purchase price $295 + shipping).  The Depth Control System (DCS) we began using last winter on the big G2 worked well for Dan Bartels - instead of ordering another DCS for the small G2, Dan will fabricate something similar.  We decided to postpone purchase of a trail compactor/leveling implement (price range of $1400); and we decided to postpone purchase of another big G2 (Tidd Tech implement costing $4500).

Dan Bartels will create a machine checklist for groomers to reference prior to each grooming session (check oil, check coolant, check action of grooming implements, etc).

Club credit cards will be requested for Steve Gest and Jesse Wimer.

Meeting Adjourned

Adjourned at 8:45 p.m.

Minutes

Taken by Tom Paulsen, Secretary