GILEAD —  “I think we had a month of good riding last year and that was it … We had about a week [of good riding] this year until this warm spell and now it’s getting all beaten. Brooks are open, mud holes are open. We’ve been losing battles so far,” said Greenstock Snowsports President Chris Merrill, who added, “It’s too warm.”

He said snowmobiling for him is an an adrenaline rush. He was nine years old in 1973 when he bought his first snowmobile with his paper route money. “It was a 1969 12-3 Olympic skidoo,” he remembers.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Maine’s climate is changing. The state has warmed about three degrees (F) since the year 1900. Throughout the northeastern United States, spring is arriving earlier and bringing more precipitation, heavy rainstorms are more frequent, and summers are hotter and drier.”

Greenstock members groom 74 miles of trails in Bethel, Woodstock, Albany, West Bethel, Milton Plantation, and Greenwood. The abutting Wild River Riders’ club grooms 30 miles of trails in West Bethel and Gilead.

The season has been getting shorter every year, said Merrill, who is 60 years old. “It didn’t seem that long ago that the ground was completely frozen in November. Usually you had snow for December. Now we’re lucky to have enough snow to go riding in January. It’s been getting worse every year for the past 10 years just because it hasn’t been cold enough.”

This year the club had to close part of the Bethel trail from Grover Hill to the Flat Road. “The pipeline all opened up. There are five brooks out there, you can’t cross … You have to pay attention,” he said. While it is less than a mile of trail that they closed, it connects the larger route, “it’s a big pain,” said Merrill.

Grooming

On a recent weekday, Wild River Riders Trail Master Jim Bourque is riding a Polaris with a drag attached. His wife and club secretary, Carol, follows on a sled. They start near the Bethel/Gilead line on the North Road. They will spend five hours, or until Jim’s shoulder starts aching, to groom the trails that end at the Bethel Town Forest.

The grooming machines are slow, traveling at a speed of about 5 miles per hour. “You’re constantly stopping for blow-downs,” said Carol, of the tree branches they clear from the trails.

“The last three years have brought less snow and not enough cold snow to keep things frozen. A lot of our trails in the woods have low spots and little streams going across. They just haven’t been freezing,” says Carol Bourque.

Jim Bourque adds, “those small streams and brooks – we rely on them to freeze up and we pull snow over them and they last the whole season.  The last three years, the water is still running underneath them … people ride on them, they collapse and fall apart.”

While the Bourques groom during the day, The Greenstock groomers go at night, “If you smooth the trail at night, it gives the trail a chance to set up without any snow machines going over it and it lasts longer,” said Merrill, who added that they don’t groom unless it is under 30 degrees, because, “we could sink a groomer,” he said.

That is nearly what happened when their newest machine, a Prinoth fell through a bridge near Pattee Brook Road in Albany. The groomer stayed an inch above the 4 feet of water but they had to get an excavator to pull it out. Merrill said the bridge likely failed, “because of the 6 inches of rain we got.”

Besides the weather, Merrill worries about land owners no longer granting access. Often, he said, it is because someone has driven their sled past or over the “closed trail” signs.  He said what is especially frustrating is when a rider expects someone from the club to come rescue their sled that has fallen in the water on a closed trail.

Both clubs say they need more members and more volunteers to groom, too.

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