Its truly amazing how some clubs manage to keep their trails nothing short of fabulous while others are so far down at the other end of the scale. Its always the most noticeable when on a ride that takes you through several different clubs trails. I know that the high levels of traffic in somes areas makes it all but impossible to keep the trails anywhere close to decent but in other areas where you (almost always) only see groomers out during the daylight hours, its more a case of poor trail management/grooming practices that lead to very poor conditions in short order. Of course theres other factors that lead to rough trails such as my pet peve, the guy/gal that can't take off from a standing start without digging a trench or can't travel up even the slightest of inclines without chewing it down to bare earth. Are these people brain dead or just have no regard for the hard work that went into maintaining the trails or the enjoyment of others.

OK so I drifted a little there, the question is: how are the trail conditions (generally) in the areas you ride and do you feel the club does a good job?

NOTE: This is in no way intended to, nor should it be considered a bash against the hard working folks that build and maintain our trail systems.
Rick. :)

I think this is a great thread to start...... and you are 100% right about the more traffic in certain places VS others....

If anyone is familiar with upstate NY, we have a ton of places to ride,.... can make it up to Canada if there is enough snow!!! :D

Anyways..... Old Forge is nice...... but it should be, because if you pay 60 bones for a trail pass, it should be kept nice... but a lot of traffic...... surprisingly for the traffic its nice tho

High Market and the tug hill plateau (sp?) is average...... same amount of traffic, but no trail pass, so lack of funds to groom as much..... (I've seen 4-5 foot moguls for 5 miles)......

Finally... a great place to ride is south of both of them.... between Utica and them two.... a lot of private groomers for a small area...... and it is a little less known about so there is less traffic.......

But, I gotta say this...... unfortunately with the lackluster year last year, we didn't get a chance to ride in all the places, only where there was snow, and that surprisingly was either Tug Hill or Old Forge, once in a while...hopefully I get a chance to ride my little secret place a coupla times this year

:thumbsup:

There isnt any grooming where I start riding, in the falmouth, cumberland area, but the trails are still in good condition. Once you get up north a little is where the grooming starts, and nice wide trails. A LOT of the trails in falmouth, cumberland, gorham area where I mostly go riding have some BIG BIG BIG fields, and I mean BIG. Those are SOOO FUN! HUGE JUMPS, big hills, long stretches so u can hold that throttle down. some of them even have ponds around it, so you can go on those.

Where I ride in Aroostook County Maine the Trails are almost always fabulous, word is they are only better in parts of Quebec! We have the whole gamut of trails, fields, woods, rail beds, logging roads, and lakes. There is something for everyone and the clubs do a first rate job.

Join a club or two, and get you riding buddies to join as well, it will make the trails even better!

its tough for the northern towns,like cochrane and kap,due to the high volume of traffic,its hard to keep up$$$..word of mouth does spread fast and they do their best,im sure some people have ridden rough trails up in the north but that is rare..what is important is for people to buy their trail permit in the area that they ride in the most!!cochrane sells 650-750 permits per year(in town) yet have such a demand to keep the trails smooth for the masses

Amalguin Highlands north of Huntsville.Enough said. :thumbsup:

here in californifacation they are cutting funds for grooming ....again

Whats grooming??

Old forge can either be great of snotty... They do keep up pretty good with the local trails but venturing out to raquette lake or toward tug hill can be painful sometimes. I prefer to ride during the week b/c thats when the groomers keep up with the trails. nothing like a sunday night ride after all the weekend warriors have left. I have ridden one trail on a saturday and thought i would never go back then sunday night there wasnt a moggle to be found...

I've been on trails that were great in the morning, and by mid afternoon, they were horrible. All due to traffic.
Its pretty hard to goom mid day on a busy trail like that, but they do seem to do a good job at night.

Originally posted by mr670@Oct 20 2002, 12:05 AM
Whats grooming??
Groooming is for idiots like me so that we don't continually get stuck!! :0: :D

i live in a farm community and the farm boys look after the grooming, they are the best in the world in fact i compare the trails where i live to others. these guys keep the groomers inside their barns for storage and pull the groomers in their own warm shop for maintenance that is hardly ever expensed out to the club. once when the groomer burned a bearing in the drive axle they loaded it on one of their floats they use for farming and hauled the groomer off to a shop. the bearing was repaired for the cost of parts only.

Grooming? Yes I think we do have them. How do you keep a trail smooth with 2-3000 sled going over it? I think the answer is to make more trails, kind of like adding another lane to the expressway, you know?
Here in Michigan with one of the highest number of registered sleds in the world and @ $20.00 for a permit, we still run on the same trails we had 30 years ago! Now does that make sense? Where does 16 million bucks go a year? That's the figure they said they needed to operate and why the fee doubled.
In 2004 the permit will be $25.00 but will anything change? Probably not......... :hallo3:

Up here the government made trail passes mandatory last year, and raised the price to 100 dollars. So when winter comes along and we get out the sleds to go for a drive and the trails were **** all year. They were only groomed once a week and thats if we were lucky. But after you got out of that snowmobile clubs grooming range and into another one it was pretty good.

I guess the groomers around here must have been stolen or something like that :). Last year was real bad, with a few exeptions. But there was not exactly a perfekt winter last season - I guess thats the reason.

S.T.P.(Sudbury Trail plan)

Very strange grooming habbits last year

There was a few weekends the trail were not groomed till Sunday night
:angry:I mean it snows 5 inches on Tuesday but they didn't groom till sunday,thats 5 days without grooming,then sometimes they groom 3 times a week when the trail didn't need grooming at all, I ride any day I can because of a F-ed work schedule.

On the most part the trails here are GREAT but sometimes I wonder???Yes I know week days are usually much better but last year was really strange

Last year we got tons of snow(record snow for the month of Feb):D :D we have about 6-7 clubs around here so they all groomed different days

You would be riding for 20miles or so on great trails but whammo the trails are all moguled up then bam great trails strange:(

Trail are usually great here but last year was strange from a grooming prospect

Local trails get hammered pretty quickly, even after the groomer has made a run, due to the traffic volume Trips to Tug Hill for me are made on weekdays, groomers go out daily, less traffic tearing things up :thumbsup:

Cat4life,

Where do you ride?