LINCOLN – Snowmobilers who discover a terrific new section of a multiuse trail cut parallel to Tobin Brook Road along ITS 81 may thank landowner HC Haynes Inc., the president of the Lincoln Snowhounds snowmobile club said Thursday.

The logging contractor employed bulldozers and excavators to create the new trail, effectively removing ITS 81 traffic from Tobin Brook Road. This will help prevent accidents involving snowmobiles and other traffic from or near camps in that area while improving forestry access.

“Between their existing logging roads and what they cut for a new road, [they] have gotten us completely off the camp road,” President Alan Smith said Thursday. “We have been working on this for three or four years as we have seen the seasonal camps become year-round camps. It will make things a lot safer up there.

“HC Haynes is a very big supporter of outdoor use of their forestry lands,” Smith added. “They are very accommodating and helpful in keeping trails and forests open for this sort of use.”

The work started around Thanksgiving and finished within two weeks, said Michael McLaughlin, a forester employed by Haynes. The bulldozers and excavators cut about three-quarters of a mile of new trail parallel to the road at a cost of about $5,000.

“It’s good policy with the public, and it’s good for economic development in the area as well,” McLaughlin said Thursday.

Haynes probably will create a new trail section near Cold Stream Pond next year in response to traffic and forestry concerns, he said.

Besides ITS 81, the club maintains 120 miles of scenic trails around and over the 13 lakes and ponds in Lincoln, including seven locally numbered trails that also connect with ITS 82 and 83. The club was created in 1971 and is among 285 clubs and other organizations within the Augusta-based Maine Snowmobile Association. About 30,000 snowmobilers (and friends) across the state and beyond make up its membership, according to the Snowmobile Maine Web site, mesnow.com.

The club and the area’s snowmobiling draw hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Lincoln Lakes region annually.

Club members will have a new 2007 Prinoth Husky groomer to break in on the trail system today, Smith said. The club acquired the groomer for $91,000 as a trade-in.

“This will give us two fairly updated, reliable machines,” Smith said.

Snow has been plentiful, but the snowmobile season hasn’t really started yet, Smith said. He warned sledders to avoid traveling on any water bodies and to move cautiously on ungroomed trails, where rocks and other obstacles might lurk.

He expected that the season would begin in earnest after the holidays.

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