Snowmobile trails opened for short time

Jeff Helsdon, Editor

It’s been a winter of cold temperatures and snow, but there hasn’t been enough snow to open the trails for more than a week for local snowmobile club, the Southern Sno Riders.

Derek Scholten, the club's public relations director, said despite the cold weather, trail conditions only opened Feb. 17. A little more than a week later, they were closed again.

“We don’t want people on them,” he said last week, hoping that the trails could be reopened again. “We want to save what we’ve got because there’s lots of frost on the ground.

The Southern Sno Riders is the local affiliate of the Ontario Federation of Snowmobile Clubs. The local club maintains 325 kilometres of trails in Oxford and Norfolk. The club’s trail connects to the Burford system in Norwich Township, and to Woodstock in Burgessville. Trails then run south to Lake Erie at Turkey Point. Those trails allow riding from Woodstock to Cochrane.

The provincial organization also maintains a map of which trails are open, and which are closed.

Although the season may end up being only a week, that’s longer than the single day the trails were open last year.

Scholten said the club had some new pieces of its trail open in areas such as Ostrander and Culloden, portions of the trail most had not written before due to the lack of snow the last few years.

“They were just very impressed,” he said.

With the trails open, Scholten saw the economic benefits of snowmobilers out in the community, saying he saw photos of snow machines in front of a Turkey Point restaurant on the weekend.

When the trails are open, the Southern Sno Riders have three groomers used to maintain the trails. That doesn’t mean club members haven’t been busy. The club’s 10 trail captains are responsible for contacting the farmers whose property the trail traverses.

“Within those length of trails they are responsible for, they are to visit the landowners, not just to renew the permission for the farm, but as a goodwill gesture to see how things went last year, to see if there is a need to have the trail moved slightly because of the crops they are growing,” Scholten explained.

The trail captains also give the landowners a pair of leather gloves and enter them in a cash draw to show appreciation for allowing them access to their property.

In the meantime, Southern Sno Riders had their first club ride in Temagami last weekend.