Plymouth event brings in the snow

PLYMOUTH - In Plymouth, you'd be hard pressed to find any snow, except for one spot.

“What's left is very, very minimal,” said Dan Schmitz, the co-chairman for the snocross event, Budweiser Classic Race of Champions.

Crews have been using trucks and semis for about a week to bring 300 loads of snow from around the city to make a snocross track. Organizers for the weekend's races say they didn't want to cancel the event for the first time in 34 years.

“It's just gut wrenching you know, you sit here and work on this project the entire fall,” said Schmitz.

With the imported snow, the Plymouth races will go on; however, the same fate wasn't in the cards for Freedom's Bryan Ludwig. He was ten hours into a trip to New York for a national snocross race, only to receive a call it had been canceled because of a lack of snow.

“Word's can't even explain, it was just a feeling of how we drove this far and now we've got to turn around,” said Ludwig.

Now Ludwig finds himself ready to race in Plymouth. Other snow-less racers are expected to follow suit.

“It's a good track for the snow we got around here,” said Ludwig. “It's probably the only place that has snow probably within 50 miles.”

“The only ace we had in our pocket was we knew we had a lot of snow around the area and in the area parking lots,” said Schmitz.

Organizers say this year was the farthest they have had to travel to bring in extra snow. After clearing out all of Plymouth, they had to make a few 10 mile trips to nearby Kohler to get the rest.

“It's really stressful for us, but we're here, we got it done,” said Schmitz.

Now they say is the easy part, which is watching the racers put on a show. The race kicks off Saturday morning at 8.