Check out this site Snow Bus (http://www.youroutdoorinn.com/snowbus)

The idea is you drive to Huntsville, they load your sled & you onto their trailer/bus, drive up to Cochrane, unload, ride back to your truck in Huntsville!! Sounds pretty neat to me. Costs $250- for the service.

Any idea how long it would take to ride from Cochrane to Huntsville?

That sounds like a way cool idea. Rev would be the guy that would know how far/long a ride it is.
:D
Rick.

Man, that would be one hell of a long ride.

It's gotta be at a five hour drive from Cochrane to Huntsville.

Go4it and panteraone should know for sure, they just made that trip the trip yesterday.

they said it was 8 hours from Cochrane to the show in Toronto.

Sounds cool though!

DP

According to my info these are the distances:

Cochrane to North Bay: 349 miles, 562 kms (confirmed)

North Bay to Huntsville: 133 miles, 214 kms (unconfirmed)

Total: 482 miles, 776 kms

If anyone would like my distance info, PM me & I'll email it to you.

that would be a long days ride ! would be nice to do it in 2 days ! but 250$ is alot of money. imagine if you go with your wife, thats 500$ just to get ther ???

That does work out to some large coinage but it would sure be a nice ride, one you'll always remember.

It's more fun to leave your truck in Huntsville and ride up to Cochrane, then trurn around and take another trail back.
Use the $250.00 for Fuel and lodging on ride up, and have a hell of alot more snowmobile riding vs. bus riding.
If anyone is intrested in riding up there, I'm sure I'll be doing this.

Chubby

I'm in Chubby,

We could start from my cottage in Magnetawan.

I've done a trip from the Cottage to North Bay quite a few times.

DP!

Yeah it would be better to do a loop, but I think the idea is this lets you do it in a weekend. So for guys that don't have the time dropping $250- lets them have a unique adventure. I forgot the OFSC TOP trail map has one of those distance charts on it.

Chubby,
I'd be interested if you promise not to exceed the posted/enforced 50kph limit. Ya right!!!!!!!!!! LOL :) :p :D

The OFSC distance chart should be taken w/ a grain of salt. I've checked some of the distances & I don't know how they arrived @ them ???

Are their distances anywhere close or totally out to lunch? At times 10 miles on their maps can turn out to be 5-8 miles out, which when looking for gas or watching for a connecting trail can make things exciting.
How much of the trail system are they updating by GPS?

ZR, The only way I will go more then 50KPH is if I'm being towed by you...LOL
Dpaige, Set the date...Anytime after Jan 12th or so.

Haliburton to Petawawa: 229 km (confirmed), 260 km (OFSC)
Astorville to Petawawa: 379 km (confirmed) North Bay to Pembroke: 340 km (OFSC). This doesn't make sense as Astorville & Petawawa are closer together than the other locales.
Cochrane to New Liskeard (direct): 316 km (confirmed), 370 km (OFSC)
Chapleau to Spanish: 331 km (confirmed), 350 km (OFSC)
Cochrane to Timmins: 100 km (confirmed), 112 km (OFSC)

I've compared my sled's ('01 MXZ 600) odometer readings w/ Polaris & Yamaha sleds. My readings were within a mile of the Polaris sleds.

Like the OFSC map list says, use as a guide.

on my speedo travelodge in northbay to cochrane 590kms

ZR Sled Head, Acording to what I was told they have 11 districts now gps mapped and hope to get the rest done this fall . The ofsc is spending $280,000 on a map on their web site . We were promised it would be up by winter and the clubs would have a preview to correct any mistakes . I wouldn't trust anybodys map or mileage charts untill they are all on gps and then it would be very hard for them to be wrong , unless of course the trail has changesd and nobody up dated the map .

$250 sounds a bit high for an 8 hour one way bus ride but thats just my thoughts .

You guys and your 50 kmh .........boy have you got a surprize coming !!!!
( more info soon )

Hi Indy,
If you can't come right out and tell us maybe post a happy face for it going up, a sad face for it going down or a double sad face for it staying the same but with 10-X the enforcement with fines to match. Come on don't leave a guy hanging.......................................plea se! :D

This should have been my first question, how did they manage to spend that much money doing the new map? No doubt I know nothing about what it takes to produce such a thing, but I do know $280 grand is alot of dough. To my way of thinking would have been far better spent on the trails themselves. Yes / No.

Ahh come on suspence is good for the soul ....lol
I will make a post later today about the changes I have heard that will be in effect this season and no the speed limit is not going up . Everyones level of responsibility is what is going to have to increase. I just need to gather a bit more info today to make sure that I have my facts straight .

And yea $280 K is a lot of cash , rest assured though it is not permit money that is being spent on it . This is all TSS ( goverment money ) funding , No I don't know how it costs to build a trail map web site of this province , but like you I think the money could have been better spent elsewhere. Especially when it is the volunteers that have to go out and gps all trails on thier own time and expence. Each District or Assc. already has decent maps and some even have maps on line , I think this is a giant waste of money. But who am I ?
Other than for doing ofsc business stuff I never visit the ofsc site , it would be the last place I would look for info on any thing .

It doesn't cost 280k to do an online mapping.

My company did one for a client that has 265 dealers across North America, from Mexico to Alaska.

This was done by paid personnel who were flown from site to site taking GPS coordinates and distance from major landmarks in the dealer area.

Remember, we are a greedy corporation and all of our management staff(including myself) feel that we require an additional Ivory back scratcher and some extra cash to ad to our already inflated wallets.

Total cost to the client for this project.

$96,000

I believe that someone is paying far too much for hotel rooms or something, that is almost exactly 1/3 the cost of the OFSC program and probably 10 time the size.

Something is funny!

DP

And you got flown to different sites and got paid to do the Gps work . We have to borrow gps units from the MNR (and guess what in some area's they are not very co-operative to say the least) or supply our own and on our own time using our own sleds we are to do the mapping.
It sounds knida fishy to me too , but i'm not sure exacctly what all the are updating on the ofsc site ...but it better be spectacular when it is done . I have heard the company doing the web site work is called DMTI-Spatial. Anyone ever heard of them ?

If we see you in the parking lot on Saunders Drive Indy, you'll say you're heading for the Royal store eh? :D :D

Originally posted by Chubby@Oct 27 2002, 02:58 AM
If anyone is intrested in riding up there, I'm sure I'll be doing this.

Chubby
hey Bud my Brother and I do this run all the time. We should get this set up so all that would like to go can get meet up. Think this would be a blast. What do you guys think ? :thumbsup:

Hey guys,

Here's a driving directions map that I just created, from my cottage to Cochrane just as an example

took about 5 minutes.

It's not that detailed, but with exact GPS coordinates it can be extremely precise.

The distances are satellite verified.

The times were calculated using 105 km/h for major highways 90 km/h for secondary highways and 60 km/h for other roads

Fuel was averaged to $.75 a litre

Summary: 468.1 kilometers (6 hours, 3 minutes)



Time
Km
Instruction
Toward
For


9:00 AM
0.0
Depart Magnetawan on Local road(s) (North)
0.2 km

9:00 AM
0.2
Turn LEFT (West) onto HWY-520
1.3 km

9:01 AM
1.5
Bear RIGHT (North-East) onto HWY-510
2.7 km

9:03 AM
4.2
Turn RIGHT (East) onto HWY-124
20.1 km

9:18 AM
24.3
Turn LEFT (East) onto HWY-11
67.0 km

10:06 AM
91.3
Continue (North-West) on TC-11 [TC-17]
3.9 km

10:10 AM
95.2
Turn RIGHT (North) onto TC-11 [Algonquin Ave]
229.1 km

1:01 PM
324.3
Continue (North-West) on HWY-11
13.4 km

1:11 PM
337.7
Bear LEFT (North-West) onto TC-11
69.4 km

2:02 PM
407.1
Rest break (15 mins)

2:17 PM
407.1
Stay on TC-11 [HWY-577] (North-West)
58.9 km

2:36 PM
432.3
Refuel before here (last refuel was 432.3 kilometers ago)

3:01 PM
465.9
Turn LEFT (West) onto TC-11
1.6 km

3:03 PM
467.6
Turn RIGHT (North) onto Local road(s)
0.5 km

3:03 PM
468.1
Arrive Cochrane

SUMMARY
Driving distance: 468.1 kilometers
Trip duration: 6 hours, 3 minutes
Driving time: 5 hours, 48 minutes
Cost: $30.73