ROSTHERN, Sask. – As he steers a snow groomer through the ditch, John Popoff notes the path he is carving is called the Duck Lake Swoop.
The path’s official name is trail 112-B. It begins in Rosthern, Sask., and heads north to Duck Lake, where it becomes trail 112-A and leads south back to where it started.
“Believe it or not, there’s a trail under there,” said Popoff, concentrating on keeping the steering wheel straight as the bulky machine rumbled forward.
The groomer, affectionately known as Brutus, is a 1985 BR 400 Bombardier. The Saskatoon Snowmobile Club bought the machine in 2000 and Popoff has been driving it off and on since.
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He became one of the groomer’s main operators after retiring from his regular job in 2004. He usually spends about 12 hours a week maintaining the snowmobile trails around Saskatoon.
Popoff is a volunteer in Saskatchewan’s Managed Trails program, which maintains nearly 10,000 kilometres of snowmobile trails throughout the province. It got its start in the early 1990s when a group of snowmobile clubs in east-central Saskatchewan started the Porcupine Forest Trail Association.
The association received a grant from the provincial government and used the money to buy the equipment necessary to manage its own trails.
The concept quickly spread to snowmobile clubs across the province. Trail passes were available as early as 1994, but the system lacked enforcement, and there was no real penalty for riding the trails without a pass.
It wasn’t until 1999 that legislation came through that made it illegal for unregistered snowmobiles to ride the trails.
The legislation was updated in November 2005 to provide provincial government funding to the trails program.
Registration is done through Saskatchewan Government Insurance and costs roughly $100 for the season. Forty dollars of the registration fee is sent to the trails program, and the remaining $60 is retained by SGI for liability insurance. Out of the 70 snowmobile clubs in Saskatchewan, 52 are involved in grooming and maintaining the trails.
The budget for the trail program is $1 million a year. The registration system pays for around 70 percent while the remaining 30 percent is gathered through fundraising.
Neighbouring Alberta also has a managed trails program, which was started in the 1980s.
“Part of our mandate is to promote safe, responsible trails,” said Louse Sherryn, executive director of the Alberta Snowmobile Association. Alberta has 5,000 km of trails that are managed by 33 clubs. The program is operated by volunteers and is not as well supported by the government as Saskatchewan’s, she said. Individual clubs raise money to help fund grooming and signage on the trails.
Chris Brewer heads the Saskatchewan Snowmobile Association (SSA) and is an advocate of the trail program. According to Brewer, the provincial income from snowmobiling before the trails program was between $25 and $30 million.
“With the trails developing, we saw the economic impact in the province, with people starting to use the trail systems for vacations, day trips and things like that,” said Brewer.
“I would think this year we’re up in the $70 million (range) easily.”
According to the SSA, there are 35, 000 snowmobiles in Saskatchewan with18,000 registered.
While it’s illegal to ride on the trails without registration, riding an unregistered snowmobile off-trail is permitted, although unregistered snowmobiles have no liability insurance. Riding on the trails is also safer.
“Lots of people say ‘oh, I don’t use the trails so why should I have to register?’, but often times we find them, they are using the trails,” said Brewer. “One word can sum it up. They’re cheap.”
The program has given Saskatchewan snowmobilers access to a vast area and can even be used to travel across the province.
“Our network of trails are all interconnected together, so it’s like a virtual snowmobile highway system in our province,” said Brewer.
Popoff agreed that the program had made it much easier to get around. While he usually puts on about 6,000 km a season on his snowmobile, that wasn’t always the case.
He admits that grooming the trails can sometimes be monotonous but he can recount at least one time he ran into something unexpected.
“I looked at the trail behind and there was a big ridge in the middle of (it), and I looked under the drag and there was a dead deer.”
The deer had died during the summer and the carcass was hidden under the snow. Still, the occasional problem isn’t enough to make him quit.
“I like snowmobiling and I like smooth trails, so I guess this is just my way of helping that cause,” he said. “I like it. I like to tame the drifts.”
