TRAIL TALES
“It’s beautiful country and there are some
spectacular views. There’s some great
opportunities for some off-trail riding as well.”
– Brandon Christensen, Tollgate Trailfinders Snowmobile Club
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machine than our ‘08 Tucker,” said
Christensen, adding the club’s entire
snow grooming team was able to tour
the Tucker Sno-Cat factory in Medford,
Ore., last fall.
“Tucker has been a great, great
partner of ours and has given us a tre-mendous
amount of support,” he said.
“They’re an Oregon-based company,
so we’re happy to support them and
keep people working in our great state
of Oregon.”
Christensen says his club’s groom-er
operators are out on the trails on a
weekly basis during the snowmobiling
season, which traditionally lasts from
the beginning of December to the end
of March, but due to a weather pattern
shift in recent years is now often start-ing
and ending later.
“Depending on the weather, we
would like to be out there three, four
days a week,” he said. “But the weath-er
has been a little warm the last few
weeks and so it’s been more like one
or two days a week. It’s kind of up to
Mother Nature.”
Christensen says when warm weath-er
leads to wet snow, it’s harder for the
groomer operators to set up the trails
properly so the snow doesn’t wash out
and form washboards that are difficult
to snowmobile over.
He adds another issue for the club’s
groomer drivers is when there’s too
much snow, like a time this past
January when it snowed heavily for
almost a week, covering the trails with
more than six feet of snow.
Christensen notes that for powder
hounds like himself, the snowmobiling
was amazing and fun afterwards, but
when you’re grooming trails, “dealing
with all that snow can be a hardship.
“Our No. 1 challenge is the weather,”
he said. “Mother Nature is going to
throw at us whatever she wants.”
snowopsmag.com | SnowOps 9
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