THUNDER BAY — Snowmobiling in Thunder Bay and the surrounding region is off to a slow start this year.
Extreme cold weather and a lack of snow have left many trails unable to operate.
The Thunder Bay Adventure Trail Snowmobile Club remains optimistic the club will see enough snow to run this year.
“We’re snowmobilers ourselves, so we want to get out on the trails and do some riding and so the hope is that we’re going to be able to do that,” said Adrian Tessier, the president of Thunder Bay Adventure Trails Snowmobile Club.
Compared to last year, he said the club has seen a little bit more snow.
“We’ve been able to go out with our groomers and do a little bit of packing on our trails that are based on logging roads, but any of our trails that are wilderness-based, like through the bush, across creeks and rocks and stuff, there’s nowhere near enough snow for those areas yet,” said Tessier.
Typically, Tessier said the club starts full grooming in the first or second week of January, but without lots of snow during that time, it is likely ’a month behind right now.’
He added to do the proper grooming, the club needs 18 inches of snow, which they are a long way from having.
“Right here, you can see we’ve got probably 3 or 4 inches of snow. Out towards Shabaqua, there might be 6 or 8 inches of snow and everything in between, but not more than that,” said Tessier.
Despite the lack of snow, the club has sold just over 200 snowmobile permits this year, which Tessier said is typical.
However, like last year he said having very little snow has really affected ridership across the province, "not just here."
“People were waiting a little longer to buy permits. Normally, they would buy them in October to get the cheap rate, but this year, we noticed some of them were waiting a little longer and soon as it started to snow, then they were into buying permits,” said Tessier.
The club maintains almost 400 kilometres of snowmobile trails in the region.
However, right now, he said he estimates there are probably around 70 or 80 kilometers of trails open in the Shabaqua and Shebandowan areas.
“I was looking at the forecast this morning and there’s nothing in the forecast for the next couple of weeks for any appreciable amounts of snow, like 1 or 2 centimetres. That’s nothing,” said Tessier.
“So, we have a few more trails that we can open soon as the weather warms up a little bit that are based on logging roads, but when it’s 35 below like today, we just don’t go out. We end up breaking machinery and it doesn’t do the job on the trails at all.”
As soon as the club gets snow, he said they’ll be out grooming trails, but without snow, they have "nothing to work with, so that’s unfortunate."
“I’d like to thank everybody for their patience. Everybody understands our situation. Without snow, we can’t make trails and that’s quite obvious and we’re doing our best to get everything going,” said Tessier.
