Rochester Active Sports Club

We have a new scarifier to add to the RASC grooming fleet. This one is 5' wide and will let us level the trails, smooth out drifts, and scarify icy conditions in 2 passes. We used it last night at Essex Park and it performed beautifully. With this addition, we can now have one scarifier at Essex, Quarry Hill and Eastwood. We've been moving them around several times a season for the last couple years and this will save those volunteer hours for more useful grooming needs and skiing!

We'd like to thank Sébastien Richer for building the drag. He saw our comment in the annual meeting email about needing another one and volunteered his skills and equipment.  After drawing out exactly what we wanted, the drag was built in one day from start, to having the primer coat of paint on the finished product. Please give Sébastien a hearty 'Thank You!' the next time you see him!

We use the scarifiers for the following purposes: 1) to cut down drifts in open areas - they work well as a leveling drag, 2) to remove ripples from the trail made by a roller bouncing, or ruts from snowmobiles or vehicles driving on the trail, 3) after several snowfalls, running these along both edges of a trail will remove the rounded trough that the Ginzu flaps leave, 4) they will also remove a frozen track.  Also, after a severe thaw/refreeze, these work well to remove footprints or ski ruts from a refrozen trail. We ripped snowcomb off our Ginzu the first year running over a frozen bumpy trail. This is now the first piece of equipment used to roughly smooth out a frozen trail. They can be run on almost solid ice and if weight is added and multiple passes made, they will shave enough ice to ski on.

They do not have a compaction bed. We feel this would cause too much drag when leveling drifts or smoothing the trail. Since we have a roller and Ginzu, we've therefore kept these very simple.

The drawings below detail the construction of one. Dimensions can be varied. We have them 4' x 8', 4' x 7', and 5' x 8'. Variations can also freely be made. The teeth can be cut from 1/4" flat stock with a plasma cutter. They probably won't stay sharp as long as a combine tooth blade, but they work. 2-1/2" angle iron can be used all around. The front skis can be anywhere from 4" wide to 2-1/2" wide. The hitch can be modified as desired. Most of ours are over-built. The very last one made used 1" square tubing only.  Rubber mat and comb can be put on the rear or nothing can be used. It all depends on your desires and how much you'd like to spend.

The original concept for this design came from St. Mary's University, Winona, MN. It's not the tool for everyone however southern Minnesota often gets several freeze/thaw cycles a winter. These tools seem particularly well suited to help recover a ski trail from an icy mass. We also typically get high winds after a snowfall. This is where the drift leveling capability comes in handy.