2/18/2023 0 Comments Snowmobile hand mirror![]() All these factors lead up to those beautiful snowmobile trails we all love to ride in the wintertime! ![]() In snowbelt areas, provincial and state associations work hand in hand with state and federal government for trail access, paid grooming contracts to maintain trails, and, in many cases grant funds (either state or federal) to purchase capital grooming equipment. Everybody was a winner! As the sport of snowmobiling progressed in North America, provincial and state level organizations evolved to the point they are at today, being the voice of the state and local snowmobile community. Most of these Elans were raffled off to offset the cost of the SV200 or to develop new trails. Buy a SV200 groomer (believe it or not there are still SV200’s running around out there grooming trails today!) and Bombardier would throw in a Ski-Doo Elan to use as the club wished. The way “Sno-Plan” worked was pretty simple. Ski-Doo introduced “Sno-Plan,” which not only put into gear a plan to develop a system of snowmobile trails in Quebec but it also sold more snowmobiles for Bombardier and Ski-Doo. He realized that if there were no trails to ride on for the future, snowmobiling had no future! You could have all the different snowmobiles in the world (at the time 100+ manufacturers were bringing snowmobiles to market) but if you had no trails to ride them on it was all for naught. Ski-Doo’s Laurent Beaudoin (son-in-law of Ski-Doo inventor J-Armand Bombardier) had a vision for the future. trail access, trail grooming, etc.) level as the sport advanced.īy 1971 snowmobile trail development and trail grooming was being ramped up in Canada. ![]() Organized snowmobiling first got started on the local level with the formation of local snowmobile clubs, first on a social level for family get-togethers and then second on a more political (i.e. As we all know snowmobilers are a resilient and creative lot. If the sport of snowmobiling was to advance and prosper, things had to change. Trails can be lonely, solitary places at groomer speeds. Not everyone had the same “passion” for our sport, especially those individuals who had snowmobilers ripping past their houses and turning their TV’s into fuzzy screens (Remember those unshielded plug wires on the old sleds?) or, even worse, waking them out of a sound sleep at 2am….NOT good impressions for the snowmobile community! So did you ever wonder how we got from there to where we are today?Īs the sport of snowmobiling exploded back in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, problems with trail access and use became major issues. All this with the promise you would put that section of fence back up in the spring when winter and the riding season were over! Ah yes, those were the days and life was so simple! I’m sure we all have stories like this from back “in the day.” However, as we all know, as the sport of snowmobiling advanced so has the complications of trail access, trail marking and trail grooming. The most formal thing you did in regards to a “trail” was ask a farmer if you could drop a section of fence to make a passage to a section of trail you needed. ![]() You went out and rode just about anywhere. ![]() Back in the 1970s when I first started riding snowmobiles in upstate New York, no one thought about groomed or marked trails. ![]()
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