Heavy holiday season snow means open trails, but ‘varying’ conditions for snowmobiling

Police and snowmobile clubs are encouraged about snowy trails but sill advise snowmobilers caution and patience.

Provincial police and local clubs shared their excitement for favourable snowmobiling conditions, but continue to preach caution and patience.

“This has been a great start to the season for many places in Ontario,” confirmed Ryan Eickmeier, CEO of the Ontario Federation of Snowmobile Clubs (OFSC), in a Monday morning Zoom interview with CTV News. “As we stand here today, we have just under 10,000 kilometres of trail available province-wide, roughly about a third of our trail network.”

That number exceeded 10,000 kilometres by the late afternoon.

According to the OFSC interactive trail guide, almost all trails in Simcoe County have opened with at least limited availability.

Local OPP detachments have begun deploying patrols.

“We have seen a lot of snowmobile traffic and as such we’ve been out on patrol,” said S/S Ted Dongelmans from Orillia OPP. “It was a good weekend of trail riding.”

But there is such a thing as too much snow according to the volunteers who are tasked with grooming, especially when it comes to road crossings.

“The plow operators are doing a great job clearing the roads, but like your driveway you clear out your driveway and the snow plow goes by and dumps the snow back in the driveway and that’s what we’re ending up with here at a lot of our road crossings,” said Jeff Soley, Orillia District Snowmobile Club President

That is why riders are warned that trails with limited availability will likely have inconsistent conditions that could dangerous.

When it comes to riding on closed trails, sledders could face $200-plus fines for trespassing.

“A lot of the trails utilize private property,” said S/S Donglemans. “If the trail is not officially open then you are trespassing.”

In the meantime, volunteers are preaching patience as they work to make trails as available as possible.

The outlook remains positive.

“If mother nature cooperates and it stays cold and we don’t get massive dumps of snow, it’s going to be a great riding season for the sledders for sure,” said Soley.

There is concern about the forecasted mild weather over the next couple of days, which is why police are reminding riders to always check trail conditions beforehand and to never take ice for granted.

The hope is for all trails in north Simcoe County to be open in the next two weeks.

While trails in Muskoka are mostly closed as of Monday, the OFSC confirms that crews are working to open them.