Very interesting and successful Lake Winnipeg Recce!  Huge thanks to Kevin Champagne and his wife Louise, who arranged for a third snowmobile for me to ride as we rode out from Grand Marais toward Gimli.

We had to find an initial crossing point just west of Grand Marais through a field of ice chunk pop ups and minor pressure ridge – no problem. 

Pretty good conditions on the lake with plenty of snow on otherwise clear ice and sections of snow drift but not too deep.

Found a nice campsite with a bowl of snow surrounded by big and small ice chunks sticking up and one large one at the ‘entry’! 

Good track made all the way about 85% across and then we came to a large and long (NE-SW) pressure ridge that was dicey to cross without a ‘ramp-plank’ (we can arrange that for Saturday). You could see the harbour area in general but it’s still about 4 Kms.

Anyways we cruised back over our same tracks and hopefully the mild conditions this week with overnight -10C ish temps will bond the snow to the ice and firm up the track we made.

Big Picture – looking good!   We will need to monitor the weather and make a few provisions, but the basic plan still looks fine!

Cheers, Fat Tom K