It has been a challenging year for our volunteers. The big storms of the past year have caused most of our forested trails to be inspected and brushed at least 3 or 4 times before we even turned a wheel on the groomers. Early snows were nice to see but when it rained and melted took any frost and ice we had away.
Starting over. We got a couple good dumps of snow in mid January but again no frost in the ground and little to no ice to work with. The main high trails like the OVRT (A311E), TCT ( A and 200 ) and the E104A from Mississippi Lake to the TCT we were able to open without worry of wet areas. As February came and went yet another thaw. More ice lost. We received some consistent colder weather and some snow that we could do something with but any trails that are not open at this time will not be this year. Reason being is flowing water or very thin ice. This is particularly the case in the Richmond area. The 203 from Munster to Eagleson Road is a write off. Water flowed through many municipal drains and roadside ditches since the first thaw in January and hasn’t stopped. Efforts to build snow bridges over these proved pointless as the flowing water undermined the snow we tried to bridge with and made it unsafe to pass over. The 301 from Goodstown Road towards Kettles road is impassable due to trees down from the summer storms and not enough ice to support volunteers to remove these trees. The 302 to Moore’s camp has seen some sled activity but we can’t groom it until fallen trees and brush have been removed.
The long and short of this memo is to inform the membership that what you see on the ITG at ofsc.evtrails.com or the Go Snowmobiling App is as good as it gonna get for this season. Get out and enjoy what’s left of our sled season.
Please e-mail info@thebeast.ca for any questions.