Dan Falloon
Waiting on Mother Nature can be a bit of a test sometimes.
Those at the Borderland Snowmobile Club, for instance, are all ready to go—they just need more snow to fall here.
Club president Dave Goodman said volunteers have been out doing what they can with the trail system, which connects Fort Frances, Emo, Mine Centre, Rainy River, and Nestor Falls.
“They have pretty much all been cleared, brushed,” he noted late last week.
“We have numerous creeks we still have to get across with the groomer,” he added. “We have basically been also waiting for ice to get thick enough on some creeks to get across with the groomer.
“We’re at that point where everything is ready to go. We just need the snow, and we need another six, eight inches,” Goodman remarked.
“Sounds like Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, we may get a present.”
Goodman said the local trails generally are ready to go around mid-December, but are running about a week late this year.
“This would be about average, I would say,” he noted. “I would normally expect that if the trails are open for kids when they get out for Christmas holidays, that would be about average.
“If we get the snow on Christmas, we’ll be about a week behind.”
Last year, parts of the trail system were very good very early but others were a bit more troublesome.
“We had heavy snow very early,” Goodman recalled. “But as you got further north towards Nestor Falls, the heavy snow made ice conditions very bad, so we were late getting open there.
“This year, it’s the other way around, where we’re going to get good ice,” he explained.
“And so once we get enough snow, we’ll be able to get opened up there a lot quicker.”
Snowmobilers can check trail conditions online at www.ofsc.on.ca
Meanwhile, trail permit sales for the upcoming season have been steady so far, which Goodman found encouraging.
“Permit sales are up close to last year, and considering we have a lot less snow at this moment, it’s looking good for this year,” he said.
Goodman also was pleased that permit sales doubled in the 2008-09 season—an encouraging sign after it was a concern in 2008.
“We were at a level where we were able to sustain ourselves through the summer,” he noted, though stressing “we still need more permit sales and more volunteers.”
Goodman also said that like a golf course, the snowmobile trails are user-pay, so the costs associated with keeping the trails clear come from permit sales.
“Basically, groomer repairs, purchasing groomers, equipment, fuel, all that stuff comes out of the permit money,” he said.
“It’s all totally user-pay covered.”
And since snowmobile trails come under provincial jurisdiction, the OPP has been ensuring all riders have their permits.
“They’ve been coming out of Kenora for the Nestor Falls area, and they’ve been doing Rainy River to Mine Centre from Fort Frances, and they’ve had quite a stepped-up presence the last few years,” Goodman noted.
“Especially last winter, there was a lot more patrolling being done so there is a fair bit of enforcement.
“It’s not the snowmobile club anymore. It’s an actual Ministry of Transportation licence, just like a licence on your car, and without that licence, it’s illegal to be on the trail,” Goodman explained.
“It’s a provincial offence.”
Season permits are available for $250 at a number of dealers in Fort Frances, Emo, and Rainy
River. Three-day ($100) and seven-day ($130) permits also are for sale.
But Goodman also stressed volunteers still are needed to help take the workload off those who have put several hours into the trails.
“We have about 600 km of trails,” he noted. “And we have about 10 or 12 people, and we could use double that.
“When we revived the club under the amalgamated club two years ago, a lot of the work has been done by six-eight people, and some of them are starting to get burnt out, so we need to spread it out over a larger base of people,” he reasoned.
“We just did a re-route here near Emo and as it turned out, basically one person did 22 hours of cutting on the trail and another person did four hours,” Goodman remarked.
Goodman said there’s a misconception that there are paid positions to work on the trails, but he maintains it all is done by volunteers.
“The brushing, the clearing, the groomer operators, the signs, it’s all done by volunteers,” he reiterated. “There are no paid positions to do that and it doesn’t happen out of the blue.”
Goodman added the work actually can be more fun than it appears.
“Going out and clearing trails, brushing and signing, and all that, I’ve done a lot of it myself and it can actually be a lot of fun,” he enthused.
“People just don’t think to volunteer or don’t think they need to, and so then it all gets put on a few.”
Those looking to lend a hand can call Goodman at 482-2580 ext. 204.
