Last winter brought the Northwoods record warm temperatures and little precipitation.
This year brought a return to cold temperatures, but it’s still sorely lacking in snowfall.
It’s meant the second year in a row where snowmobile trails haven’t been open over Christmas and New Year, typically one of the busiest times of year for trails.
“Snowmobilers, yes, they're very discouraged, but the ones I feel so sad for are the businesses. We lost the whole Christmas/New Year week which was usually packed with tourists,” said Jim Wendt, President of the Oneida County Snowmobile Council. “They come here and ride and spend their money, and you have business owners who, you know, they're counting on traffic, and we're not getting it.”
While any snow at this point helps, Wendt says the few inches Oneida County picked up over the weekend was too fluffy to pack well.
“It doesn't do any good. We need a good wet snowfall, one that happens around 25 degrees or something. It would really help us, because then we can get our machinery out to begin to what we call pan the trails, which is packing the snow down on the trail base, and then it'll freeze in and drop the frost down there. It'll start making it hard, and then we can begin to think about putting snowmobiles out there,” said Wendt.
Wendt says letting snowmobiles out there too soon will just turn the trails to dirt.
He reminds riders to stay off the trails until they’re officially open. Aside from being illegal, it could also cause a landowner to revoke access and ruin a trail segment for everyone.
Wendt also encourages snowmobilers to go to reliable sources for when trails will open.
Oneida County Forestry will send out an official press release when all clubs in the county are ready to open trails.
“It will come, I hope very soon, but it will come, but make sure it's from reliable sources,” said Wendt.
Snowmobile trails are groomed and managed by volunteer-run snowmobile clubs.
Even with trails closed right now, Wendt says it’s important to support the work they do.
Many of them are continuing to host fundraisers and collect donations.
Wendt says every little bit helps.
“A lot of them have loans on these half-a-million dollar pieces of equipment, and they’ve got to make payments. There's things that have to be purchased, drags for their machines. These are purchased in the off season, and they've taken on debt and so on for that we need to pay,” said Wendt.
Last year was the first time in at least 25 years that snowmobile trails never opened in Oneida County.
In records going back to 1999, only three years had January opening dates, otherwise trails have always been opened by the end of December.
Trails cannot stay open later than March 31st, even if there’s good snow conditions.
