The Following is a educational "thesis" on trail grooming, written by Tim Geer of DT's Westbrook Motel, of East Jordan (and a groomer operator for the Jordan Valley Trail System). I found it so good, I had to publish it. Thanks, Tim.

When we groom we do it for several reasons.

1. Lock down the trail. To create a good durable base we need temps near 32 degrees and lots of good wet snow. Our goal is to get out there when there is very little or no traffic, generally overnight, and get a good compression of that wet snow. If it is too cold and the snow is too powdery we can't get that to happen. You have probably experienced this as a kid when you tried to make a snowman or snowball out of powdery snow. As you know it just results in a lump of power that stays powder. Yes, this process makes the trail flat but it only takes a couple of sleds to bring it back to an ungroomed state. Furthermore, all of the powder tends to get blown off the trail especially at curves and starting and stopping points. This is what we experienced this past week and weekend. So ideally we would groom overnight when temps as near 32 degrees, the trails are left alone for 3 to 6 hours after we've groomed, and during that time the temps drop. This turns the freshly groomed trail into a block of frozen snow that is very durable and stays put.

2. Push the cold into the ground. By running a 25 ton groomer over the trail we compress not just the snow but the ground underneath it. This pushes the cold deeper into the ground and freezes the ground much deeper than it would normally freeze. Under normal conditions the ground may freeze as much as 48 inches deep, but when we constantly push that cold deeper into the ground we can get the ground to freeze many feet more than that. This turns the trail into its own freezer. So on days when the temps are above 32 degrees, the ground can help fight the melting by releasing its cold back into the snow and help preserve the trail. This also helps firm up wet spots faster like the one that ate the groomer.

3. Knock down the bumps. I'm sure this reason is the most important to you all out there. A day of riding bumps can really put a damper on a weekend and I'm sure has made a lot of you reach for the Motrin like it has me many times. Once a good base is established, most of our grooming is for this reason alone. But until we get a good base we must be VERY careful as we can easily ruin a trail by overgrooming. There are two and sometimes three parts to a groomer. First there is the pre-groomer. This is a set of blades that comes before the tractor tracks and they are intended to knock down some of the severe bumps so the tractor can travel smoothly and better flatten with the Lacross Drag. Secondly, on the front of the LaCross Drag there are another set of blades. This is where the real work takes place. These blades cut the tops off of the moguls and breaks the snow up so it can be smoothed and compressed. This brings us to the third and last part of the mechanical grooming process which is called panning. The pan is pretty much like it sounds. It is a flat heavy surface at the back of the groomer that takes the broken up snow and pushes it flat and compresses it tightly so it can become that durable hard frozen block of snow that I mentioned earlier. I know a lot of you have asked "why aren't they grooming more often?" If we don't have a lot of snow to work with all we can do is panning. If we drop the blades without sufficient snow we can bring up dirt. This obviously discolors the snow and leaves it vulnerable to sunlight. As with anything, the darker it is the more it absorbs light and in the case of snow, causes it to melt faster. This is why the first several grooms are done with only the pan and don't always get all of the bumps out. So it not a case of our slacking off, or the groomer not doing a good job, it is simply doing what we can to get a good base that will last the entire season. It reminds me of the groomer that taught me how to groom. Gary always told me "We can make it flat and rideable for three days and then it will melt or we can leave it a little bumpy and it will last for 3 weeks or more!"

4. Keeping riders on the trail. If the trail is full of moguls you might be tempted to jump off of it and ride next to it or take another path altogether. This is fine until you ride over a tree plantation or somewhere else that pisses off a private land owner. Many of you may not know this, but much of the land that you assume is state land is private property. The Jordan Valley Trails Council like all other clubs and councils spend many, many hours trying to get landowners to allow us to use their land for snowmobile trails. This process becomes very difficult when yahoos disrespect these very lands and ride anywhere they please. I guarantee you that there has been a trail that you ride that has been either re-routed or closed because the landowner got sick and tired of sleds going where they are not permitted. So by keeping the trail flat we can get a better chance of keeping the sleds on that designated trail.