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NEWPORT – Five or six years ago, Mac Cianchette and Bob Duplisea – already avid snowmobile riders – began planning a trip worth waiting for.
“Every time we’ve gone up to Canada – we’ve gone up for eight to 10 days a year – [we] typically never felt like we’ve filled our bellies,” said Cianchette, a 55-year-old from Hartland. “We just haven’t had enough of it. So we said, ‘Let’s do a big trip some day.'”
Now, years later, that big trip is fast approaching. Next week, Cianchette and Duplisea will be joined by Jack Walsh of Hartland and Adrian Brochu of Madison for an ambitious trip that will take them from Seattle to British Columbia … and eventually all the way back to Maine. In total, the group expects to spend six weeks on the trail and cover from 5,000 to 6,000 miles.
Cianchette said the yearly 10-day jaunts were just long enough to whet the appetite of him and his pals.
“It seems like your muscles were just beginning to get in shape [by the end of the journey],” Cianchette said.
Walsh clarified his friend’s point.
“Your keister’s just getting into shape,” Walsh quipped.
This time, everyone’s keister will have plenty of time to get in shape, as the foursome embark on a journey they’ve taken to calling “The Old Geezers West to East Coast Tour.”
“We didn’t come up with the name [of the tour],” Cianchette said on Friday, as he met with Walsh and Duplisea at Newport Motorsports. “I think our friends and folks we were talking with just started saying, ‘That bunch of old geezers is going on a trip.’ I don’t know really know if we’re geezers, but …”
Of the four, Walsh is the only one who admits to being a true geezer. In fact, at 71, he claims that may make him “head geezer.”
Duplisea, who lives in Pittsfield, is 62, while Brochu is 60.
Regardless of their age and endurance, all four are officially “geezers” for this trip. Their Yamaha jackets say so. Their logo stickers say so.
And with smiles on their faces, they’ll say so, too.
How do you get there from here?
The logistics of a cross-country snowmobile trip are complicated, as the Geezers learned during the planning phase.
You can, in fact, get here from there … maybe … as long as you pay close attention to the trails, and the weather.
Duplisea, the group’s planning and mapping expert, says that having years to prepare for such an ambitious journey was valuable.
“One of the good things about four or five years in the planning is that we’ve had plenty enough chance to talk ourselves out of it,” Duplisea said. “No way. Each year, we got closer and closer to it and more excited. This is a good thing. And as I said before, we’re doing it for the fun of it.”
Cianchette said the sheer enjoyment of the adventure was the key factor.
“We thought we’d like to do it for the challenge and the excitement and the fun, and if we can’t have fun on a trip like this, [we’re] never going to have fun,” Cianchette said.
To Duplisea, focusing on “the fun of it” means he’s drawing a distinction between the trips some take to raise money for a charity or to challenge the limits of endurance.
This trip isn’t an endurance test, and no money is being raised. And he wants to make sure that things are as comfortable as they can be for the group.
“No roughing it,” Duplisea said. “Hoteling every night. We are bringing limited survival gear, but that’s just in case. We plan to be in a motel every night.”
After the group arrives in Seattle, they’ll be picked up at the airport and taken to the truck … and their sleds … which Brochu already delivered to the West Coast.
All four will be riding Yamaha Vectors. The sleds each have a three-cylinder, four-stroke, 973-cc engine that generates 123 horsepower.
“I got the chance to try one out last year and I found that it was the most comfortable sled I’ve ridden yet,” Cianchette said. “After 200 miles, I felt like it wouldn’t be a problem to go another 100 if we wanted to go. And I’ve never felt that way before. After 200 miles, it was ‘It’s time to get off this thing.'”
That level of comfort will be important: The group expects to log about 1,000 miles a week.
After touching down in Seattle, they’ll spend a few days sledding in Washington state before putting the sleds on a trailer, crossing the border into Canada, and beginning the real journey.
That trip will start in Kamloops, British Columbia, and will continue east in fits and starts until the group reaches Edmonton, Alberta.
Three of the riders will be on sleds from Kamloops to Edmonton, while another will be driving the truck. The truck will be left in Edmonton because there’s a major airport there, and a cross-country trail system is also accessible in the city.
“The trail system from [Kamloops] to Edmonton is spasmodic,” Duplisea said. “The trails are within [themselves], meaning that you go a few miles and it’s club [trails], but there’s no interconnecting to the next club group of trails.”
Therefore, the group will ride sleds when they can, then trailer up and move forward to the next stretch of isolated club trails.
“We’re going to keep the truck and trailer to get us so that we don’t have to get somebody else to trailer us for a few hundred miles to the next trail system,” Cianchette said.
In Edmonton, that will all change: All four riders will saddle up and they’ll leave the truck behind, for Brochu to retrieve later.
“Bob has verified for us that we can get home from there,” Cianchette said.
All that will stand in their way at that point: A few thousand miles of snow.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Geezers with a backup plan
There are, of course, a few concerns. Chief among them is snow. Not too little of the white stuff, mind you. Too much, all at once.
“One of the fears we might have is that if we get caught in a snowstorm unexpectedly, or if we get caught in an area we didn’t anticipate being in,” Duplisea said.
The group is prepared for those dilemmas – they have two GPS units, two satellite phones, and a full arsenal of survival gear at their disposal.
“If we do find ourselves somewhat lost or caught up in a snowstorm, we’re prepared to hunker down for the night, find a patch of woods somewhere, and do our thing,” Duplisea said.
Cianchette has faith in his friends, and said all four snowmobilers know better than to push their luck in potentially dangerous situations.
“Years ago, we found out that if it’s snowing and there’s any type of wind at all, we just don’t go out there, because you can lose somebody going across a field,” Cianchette said.
Avoiding those situations before they occur is important, Cianchette said.
Walsh is more direct. He’s been snowmobiling since 1964, when he cut his teeth on a Sno-Prince sled.
“Back in those days, if you went 20 to 40 miles in a day, that was a big day,” Walsh said. “Now you’re doing 200 plus.”
And he said the advance planning and careful decision-making will help.
“We’re going to be on marked trails,” Walsh said. “So unless we do something stupid, I don’t think we’ll have any problems.”
Duplisea is the map man. Walsh is a trained mechanic and will be relied upon if the need arises. Brochu is the “scout master,” and Cianchette is the group’s de facto leader, Duplisea said.
The sleds are all equipped with wheel kits that were donated by Retrax of Caribou. That accessory allows sledders to turn their skis into wheels, should they need to.
And Jason Lovley of Newport Motorsports, along with Yamaha, have provided the group with new “Old Geezer Tour” Yamaha jackets and an array of other gear to help them on their journey.
“They were gung-ho for it, so we certainly were as well,” Lovley said. “We thought [the tour] was a great idea.”
When the Geezers are away …
While the families of Cianchette, Duplisea, Brochu, and Walsh will be paying close attention to their progress – Cianchette plans on forwarding reports and photos to his office – that doesn’t mean those family members will spend all of their time worrying.
The opposite may be true, Walsh admits.
“All our wives are going on a cruise,” Walsh said. “That’s part of it. They’re only going for a week, though.”
Duplisea said the four women – Judy Cianchette, Sally Duplisea, Donna Walsh, and Celine Brochu – will fly to Puerto Rico and embark on a weeklong journey of their own.
Snow, it needn’t be said, will not be a problem.
Cianchette said that over the years of planning the coast-to-coast snowmobile excursion, he’s not exactly sure when the concurrent cruise was inserted into the itinerary.
But he’s got a pretty good idea.
“Probably day one,” Cianchette said with a chuckle. “I don’t remember. But probably day one.”
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