Posted Jan. 30, 2005

Ed Culhane column: Snowmobilers find trail broken

Spaces not as open for riders anymore

Greenville

The snowmobile purred, idling in neutral, until I squeezed the accelerator, gingerly at first, and felt it drop into gear.

With a little more gas it crawled forward on the thinly packed snow of the parking lot. At the trailhead, it slid onto deeper, softer snow. I gave it more gas and it leapt forward, as if anxious to cut loose, to fly across the snow, to reach that fluid balance of form and function a modern snowmobile can achieve only with speed.

I was following another sled, ridden by Dave Cyr of the Green Knights Snowmobile Club. He had loaned me his wife’s machine. We slowed to cross Everglade Road, cruised through a field of exposed grass and dirt, crossed State 76 then sped up a hill, punching into the woods where a corridor had been cleared for power lines, the sleds running smoothly across shaded, well-packed snow.

That’s one challenge facing area snow riders: finding snow to ride on. There was a 9-inch snowstorm a week ago and although the television stations and my own newspaper acted like it was a big deal, and called it names like “nasty,” it was just snow, light and fluffy, and there was barely enough of it to open the trails for a few days. It’s already shrinking under the daily solar onslaught.

Wimpy winter. The day after this ride, Winnebago County, Greenville’s neighbor to the south, announced that its snowmobile trails were closing for lack of snow.

“We haven’t had a real good year in a long time,” Cyr said during one of our stops.

The power lines overhead were significant, since no one can build structures beneath them. That points to the other big challenge facing area riders — their trails are being cut off by sprawling development. In Green-ville, development is proceeding rapidly.

Later, I talked to Russ Buman, 71, one of the original members of the Green Knights, a club that has been around for 30 years. In the late 1970s, Buman and his friends would jump on sleds and take off for such distant locations as Copper Harbor, Mich., or Brainerd, Minn. A married couple they knew took a vacation and drove the support truck, pulling four fresh sleds on a trailer. They’d meet the truck in small towns along the route.

“Nowadays, machines don’t break down like they did back then,” he said. “We didn’t have cell phones either.”

In the 1970s, when deep snow fell in December and snowmobiles were becoming the rage, Greenville was mostly small farms, with the Greenville Co-op, a gas station and the Silver Dome dance hall serving as the business district.

“We used to be able to run almost anywhere we wanted other than the main street,” he said. “Now there’s houses going up all over. There’s hardly any farms at all anymore. I live a half mile north of Greenville (the business district) and north of my property line the farmer sold his land. During the last two years, 200 houses have gone up. We’re not the only ones having problems. It’s all the towns. There is so much country-type buildings and development going up it’s hard to get between the buildings with the trails.”

Development has sliced up Greenville’s system of snowmobile trails. Two years ago, Cyr and I could have turned right before Everglade, crossed Greenwood heading east, followed what is now Parkview Drive, cut south across open country, crossing States 15 and 96. We could have ridden west into the Rat River Marsh, hooked up with the Wiouwash State Trail, run north to a Green Knights trail that cuts back east and then returned to the same parking lot.

The new subdivision north of Parkview Drive effectively blocked it. There’s a power line corridor running through there, but the riders weren’t organized enough to talk to town officials when plans were being drawn to see if something could be worked out, or numerous enough to give their message the weight it needs.

“That cut off half our trail system,” Cyr said. “You used to be able to do a nice, 30-mile loop.”

Cyr believes that if more of the people who ride the trails participated in the clubs that build them, they’d have a better chance of saving and enhancing what is left.

He is not against farmers selling their land or people building homes. He knows that development will quickly fill the area of Greenville that has sewer service. What he and other club members want is to start a dialogue, and they could use some support. To spark some interest, they’ve erected signs along their routes that mimic the famous milk promotion — “Got trails?”

“Our club believes the family sport of snowmobiling is an asset to Green-ville’s recreational opportunities,” Cyr said, “and it would be a real shame to lose it here because we failed to act soon enough.”

He wonders if all the riders who use the trails understand how they come to exist. Do they think the state or county is negotiating with landowners, putting up the signs and grooming the trails?

The truth is that Wisconsin has 25,000 miles of snowmobile trails, which is greater than the mileage of all county highways combined. Amazingly, 90 percent of snowmobile trails exist on private property. That only happens because club members work closely with land-owners, making sure to mark trails so that sensitive plantings and winter crops are not harmed.

“We connect to a club that connects to another club that connects to another club all the way to the state line and beyond,” Cyr said.

Donna White, president of the Association of Wisconsin Snowmobile Clubs, which has a membership of 30,000 families, said the economic boost provided by 200,000 registered snowmobile riders in Wisconsin helps many small businesses and small towns survive the cold season.

“It’s reflected in the tax base,” she said, “and it’s all provided by volunteers.”

The association is working with state legislators, exploring ways to squeeze a little funding out of riders who don’t participate in clubs. In some states, non-club-members are required to pay a higher registration fee. Another idea involves trail passes. But the real key is participating, she said.

“If you are an organized snowmobiler, and you don’t know the names of your legislators, you are falling down,” she said. “We have good working relationships with sheriff’s departments. We need the snow patrols. And we need cooperation between town and county boards.”

Cyr thinks the Greenville trails can not only be saved but expanded. He served on a citizens committee that inventoried Greenville’s natural resources. There are still opportunities, he said, even within the sewer service area, if enough people get involved.

Then, like club members all across Wisconsin, they’ll be out there in the fall, marking trails, ever hopeful, waiting for the true Wisconsin winters to return.

“Snowmobilers are the most optimistic group of people I know,” White said.

Ed Culhane can be reached at 920-993-1000, ext. 216, or by e-mail at eculhane@postcrescent.com