Dec. 27, 2010 – Snowmobile Digest
Take a Friend Snowmobiling Week coming in February
The snowmobile community is excited to announce the Take a Friend Snowmobiling Week, which will be held Feb. 12-21.
This elongated week celebrates friends and family snowmobiling. This special week compliments the Take a Friend Snowmobiling campaign, encouraging the industry to take its non-snowmobiling friends out snowmobiling.
There are a few recommended guidelines for participants:
Clubs and their members are encouraged to participate and to hold a special day or weekend encouraging members to bring non-snowmobiling friends to the clubhouse to go for a short ride and discover what snowmobilers do during the winter.
As a special incentive to take non-snowmobilers snowmobiling, manufacturers will give away a gift certificate to a lucky individual who registers online and participates in the Take a Friend Snowmobiling Week event. Beginning in January, the Take a Friend Snowmobiling Week Registration Form will be prominently displayed on the Go Snowmobiling website: www.gosnowmobiling.org.
Non-snowmobilers and their snowmobiling friends need to fill out the registration form to be entered in the drawing. If a club is interested in organizing an event, their club members who participate get to register to win, and their guests get to register to win as well. The registration form is easy to fill out.
Plan on participating if you are going to be snowmobiling from Feb. 12-21 and make sure to register on the Go Snowmobiling website: www.gosnowmobiling.org .
BRP issues recall for about 1,000 snowmobiles
BRP is recalling about 1,000 Ski-Doo snowmobiles because of an explosion hazard. The company has received three reports of explosions, including one in which a person sustained minor burns to the face and hands.
The models involved in the recall include: the 2005 Expedition TUV 600 H.O. SDI, 2007 Skandic SWT V-800, 2008 Skandic SUV 600 H.O. SDI and 2008-‘10 Skandic SWT V-800s. The affected vehicles were sold nationwide from March 2004 through March 2010. Registered owners have been notified of the recall by mail and have been instructed to bring their snowmobiles to dealers for a free repair. Those models already repaired under previous recalls must be repaired again.
Study provides exclusive look at Canadian trails
A comprehensive study has identified more than 167,000 miles of managed trails throughout Canada, a press release stated.
The study also details existing management practices for those trails as well as identifies them as either shared-use or single-use trails, with the latter being used for snowmobiling, ATVing, off-road motorcycling and other recreational purposes, according to the National Trails Coalition.
“The primary objective of this study was to gather data about existing Canadian trails and their uses in order to understand the big picture,” Terry Norman, national coordinator for the coalition, said in a press release.
To get a copy of the study, visit www.ntc-canada.ca.
New York City mulls whether to add more sled trails
An upstate New York city looking for a bigger share of the local snowmobile tourist trade may move to draw more riders, an online report said.
Leaders in Oneida will consider allowing snowmobiles to operate on more of its streets, opening it to more of the trails that converge on the city halfway between Syracuse and Utica, the Associated Press reported.
A council was scheduled to hold a public hearing Dec. 21 on measures that would allow them to authorize trails across private property.
Yellowstone sled areas expected to open
Yellowstone National Park roads are being groomed in order to open to commercially guided snowmobile and snowcoach travel as scheduled in mid-December.
Limited, managed motorized oversnow travel over groomed, snow-packed park roads will be permitted again this season under the same temporary plan as last year, according to an online report at www.kxlf.com.
The plan allows up to 318 commercially guided snowmobiles, and up to 78 commercially guided snowcoaches a day into the park.
The roads that link West Yellowstone, Mammoth Hot Springs and the park’s South Entrance with Old Faithful and Canyon were set to open to commercially guided snowmobiles and snowcoaches on Dec. 15.
Motorized oversnow travel on the East Entrance road and Sylvan Pass was scheduled to begin a week later.
The park’s list of permitted snowmobile and snowcoach operators is available online at www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/wintbusn.htm. PSB
