County preps for snowmobile season

FORT KENT – A thin blanket of snow covers northern Maine fields, hills and snowmobile trails, and slushy snow and ice patches are accumulating on lake and riverbanks.

With signs of winter evident everywhere, local enthusiasts have had their snowmobiles out on front and side lawns for weeks, anxiously awaiting a thick enough cover of snow to take off.

Restaurateurs, eateries and commercial establishments that cater to snowmobilers also are anxiously awaiting tourists and hoping for a long season.

During the off-season, dozens of volunteers, such as a group in Fort Kent, have been working on snowmobile trails, looking to make them even better than before.

It’s the same story with snowmobile clubs across the state.

Volunteers widen trails, make curves a bit less daunting, clear brush, install culverts and repair bridges to make area trails even more enticing, hoping to lure more snowmobilers from the south.

“We are looking to better the economy of Fort Kent,” Kenneth Michaud, the local police chief and longtime snowmobile enthusiast, said Saturday. “We’ve made our trails wider, easier to travel on and just nicer.

“We’ve worked all summer on these trails,” he said. “We are just about done, and its time because the snow is coming.”

With a handful of volunteers, donated or discounted materials, and a $16,000 grant from the Maine Heritage Trail Fund, Michaud spearheaded upgrades on much of the 50 miles of snowmobile trails managed by the Valley Sno-Angels of Fort Kent.

The Maine Snowmobile Association named Michaud, a former president of Valley Sno-Angels, Maine’s Snowmobiler of the Year for 1999-2000.

“We are lucky to have the landowners we have in northern Maine,” he said. “Without them, we could not have the trails we have.”

Even Saturday afternoon, he hoped to get one or two people to help him install a gate and culvert on one of the trails. The work never ends, he said.

There are hundreds of volunteers like Michaud and his people in Maine’s 277 snowmobile clubs. They maintain more than 12,000 miles of trails from Kittery to Quebec. The elaborate system of trails rivals any roadway system, with each trail named and marked with signs like a highway, such as ITS 85 and Route 73.

“We also couldn’t do it without local contractors donating time, machinery and materials,” Michaud said. “We have people donating time with bulldozers, excavators, skidders – anything we need.”

During the summer and fall, Michaud and his crews have straightened curves on ITS 85, put in culverts on Route 73, re-routed, widened and installed a wood and steel bridge on Route 73B, made a new trail to get to John’s Convenience Store, took out ties on a former rail bed, cut a new right-of-way on Route 85 south, did some grader work to Carter Brook on Route 85 south, made a new bridge on Route 73A over Wallagrass Stream, and rebuilt a 1-mile section through the woods on 85A to state Route 11.

The Fort Kent club had to hire a soil scientist to help map a trail through a wetland area for a one-mile trail from East Main Street, along Fish River, to a railroad trestle behind the District Courthouse on Market Street.

The rail trestle is being renovated, and should be ready sometime in January. The trestle, purchased by the town from Bangor and Aroostook Railroad, will open a trail from the east side of Fort Kent to the town of St. Francis, nearly 20 miles away. The trail – Routes 85 and 92 – is on a former rail bed.

Some of the more prominent volunteers and organizations mentioned by Michaud for the summer work were Marc Michaud, Michael Levesque, Bob Daigle, Don Guimond’s family, Jacques Cyr with his equipment, the Boy Scouts, Pelletier Construction, the Town of Fort Kent for equipment, Lee Theriault, June Pelletier, Corriveau Construction, Maine Public Service, and Bangor and Aroostook Railroad for equipment.

The volunteers installed $2,000 worth of new signs on the trails, along with more than $5,000 worth of culverts.

The rail bed trail and rail trestle work was funded with other state grants. The renovation of the rail trestle alone is a $127,000 project.

The project replaces a crossing over the Fish River at Fort Kent Mills. The bridge was demolished this summer after the Maine Department of Transportation completed a new bridge over the Fish River.

“Donated materials and equipment time nearly doubled the work we could have done with the $16,000 grant we received,” Michaud said. “If people didn’t donate their time and equipment, we couldn’t do all the work that needs to be done.”

Michaud said the only setback to even better trails is the need for more volunteers and assistance. Their snowmobile club had 185 members last year, but there are 800 snowmobiles registered in Fort Kent alone.