8963-R1_MSA_February2025_Newsletter

MSA Club News

lines of information and pack it away with your registration and insurance info. You never know. Rescue Helicopter Landing Spot: Located at the second Elsemore Landing sign, near Pocumcus Lake. GPS: N 45° 10.14’, W 67° 53.79’. Help Needed: Call 796-5027, Les, Brinda, or a store worker. Trail Problem: Call 796-5027, Les. He will solve the problem. Pine Tree Store: Hours: 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM, 796-5027. NON-Ethanol Gas. Always remember, for food, drink, supplies and fun, “You can’t go wrong at The Pine Tree Store”. Lodging: Call 796-5027, Les, Brinda, or a store worker. Monthly Meeting : Every 2 nd Wednesday @ 6:00, usually at the GLS Fire Station. NORTHEAST CARRY sc Northeast Carry, ME Follow us on Facebook and Instagram We have been very fortunate have enough snow to groom and ride! Aaron has been out with our Prinoth Husky groomer as often as possible. (In addition to grooming the regu lar trail toward Kineo and Kokadjo, Aaron is also grooming a 9-mile loop to Lobster Lake which is a bonus scenic ride.) In early January we had some rain followed by snow that made alders droop and branches break off into the trails. Many thanks go out to camp owners, club members and friends: Marty Carmichael, Tyler Carroll, Ryan Burnham, Larry and Aaron Palleschi, Brian and Leticia Goucher, Zach and Seth McKenney, Mike Dolan and of course the tireless effort of Aaron. (We apologize if we have left out any helpers as we appreciate everyone!) A huge round of applause to the group of volunteers that made this huge task seem manageable. Many hands, make light work! The Store is open 8:00-5:00 during the height of the snowmobile season selling gasoline (including non-ethanol), groceries, yummy prepared foods on the grill, other spe cials including homemade cookies. Groceries and sweatshirts are also available. info@northeastcarrysnowmobileclub.com 207-200-9417 Deer Ole Me As everyone is aware, we have had a slow start to our winter. There’s plenty of time for good riding as weather improves, so stay opti mistic! The snow is like the internet…..buffer ing and intermittent!! Thank you to all our members who have renewed. We also appreciate the many dona tions that came in with your dues. Don’t forget to pass the word to other sledders about join ing our club. For the continuous support of our club sled, we want to thank Moosehead Motorsports in Greenville Junction. We would be lost without their generous support. Shirley Bog Trail Busters had an impressive group of members that volunteered with their sleds for trail monitoring and other tasks when Greenville hosted the annual Wilderness Sled Dog Races. (as of this writing, we are assum ing the snow conditions improved and the races were held Feb. 8th) Club rides with President Charlie Baker are planned based on trail conditions each week Wednesdays or Thursdays. There is always a destination lunch stop. (watch for club emails) Trails With the lack of snow in January, our vol unteers were able to continue with trail main tenance including brush cutting on the River Trail and covering water ways on the Shirley By Pass trail which iced over nicely in Jan. with the frigid temps. It is being groomed and panned but it is rough without a deep snow cover. Finalizing trail maps has been difficult and are pending due to logging closures. Parts of the CC Road (Shirley Tote), parts of ITS86, Breakneck Ridge, Thanksgiving Pond and Windmill trails are closed. You can access SHIRLEY BOG TRAIL BUSTERS Shirley, ME

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GRAND LAKE sc Grand Lake Stream, ME

Information can be found in MSA newsletters. The meeting ended at 7:25PM. The next Club meeting will be on Saturday, Feb. 8 th at The Bridgton Community Center on Depot Street. The Fabulous Pot Luck Supper begins at 6PM followed by the business meet ing at 6:45. We hope that some out of town members will find it easier to get to a weekend meeting. The March meeting will be on Saturday, March 8 at 6pm with potluck followed by a business meeting at 6:45pm. Come learn about upcoming Club events and final discussion for the Club Trip. All are welcome! Hope to see you there and keep doing your snow dance! Bill Preis PMSC Club Correspondent After three months of negotiations among multiple Federal and State representatives and snowmobile groups, we have been issued a temporary permit to use the Bog Brook bridge in Gilead, which we previously announced as closed. We are very grateful for the hard work and expertise of those involved in allowing us to open the bridge and trail. Access to Bethel from Evans Notch and New Hampshire will be available if we ever get enough snow to open the network. Carol Bourque Secretary/Treasurer Hello Fellow Riders, Well, we have little if any snow on our trails. Our groomers here in Monson have not been out at all!! There has been a little riding on some of our shorter trails but overall, it has not been good. And we are not alone in this situa tion. It is shaping up to be another tough year. On a positive note, our groomers are ready to roll when we do get snow. We are looking forward to trying out our new Limb Masher, which hopefully will save hours of brushing on the trails. We are conducting a February Cal endar Raffle and want to send a big THANKS to all the local businesses that contributed prizes: Turning Page Farm, Monson Gen eral Store, Lakeshore House, A.E. Robinson’s Irving, Killam Builders, J Wentworth Wood working, Northwoods Aerial, Red Maple Inn, Rowell’s Car Wash, Sperry General Store, and Bear’s Den. Please give these businesses your business when possible. Waiting for Snow Monson Narrow Gauge Riders LEEDS STUMP THUMPERS Leeds, ME It Snowed!!! With a bit more in the future! Are we excited? YES!!! Are we ready? Well… are we ever? We have been getting used to our “new to us track truck”. We know the winch works. Most of the time. It’s so great to be back out in the snow, prepping and riding. The town trails need a lot of work but ITS 87 is open and ready but be careful. CMP has moved out (finally) but left no time to get the trail ready before riding season. WILD RIVER RIDERS Gilead, ME NARROW GAUGE RIDERS Strong, ME

Jan 8, 2025, Trail Master Les held another good snowmobile club meeting. It was also an important meeting. Maine State Dept of Agriculture, Snowmobile Division, sent Eric, their GPS agent, and he brought his expe rienced friend Derick, from Maine Snow mobile Association, MSA. We had about 15 people in attendance. What’s going on, if I got it straight, is our trail system map, the geo graphic picture, is owned by others. We can no longer print and sell it. We have to make our own trail system geographic picture map. Les got the state involved. With the help of the Snowmobile Division, MSA, computer programs, GPS programs, Eric, Derick, and our Jeremy, Les has assembled a very expe rienced group that will be working on the new map project. So, Maine state will make a complete state geographic picture map. Our trails will be on it and located by GPS. We will be able to print maps of our trail system from the complete state map electronic files. They hope to be going into the woods soon to record the GPS trail location data needed. Our map release date is scheduled before next winter. The club has placed two Work Hours Note books at the Pine Tree Store. One is for State Trail System Work and the other for our Club Trail System Work. Each is well organized. Every job you perform has a different pay scale. Please keep track of what you do for work and the time it takes. Record that in these work notebooks. We had another 5” snow storm, but I feel this one is different. Our first two storms of this size were followed by warm days of 50 ° and rain. All the snow and ice melted away. The difference this time is we have seven days coming of single digit nights and days in the teens. No snow storms are in the near future, but you never know. By the time you read this article, we should have a good base with a foot of snow on top and many snowmobiling miles under your belt. Raffle: The club has raffled off the same type great items for the last few years. This year’s plan is to wait until spring to start selling tick ets and raffle something nice in the winter. Stay tuned to see what the club comes up with. Signage: This is a big topic with MSA. Cor rect signage will give you information, direc tion, make you safer and more. We hear our signage is good. However, Les says we can be even better by installing any type signage that will make snowmobile travel easier and safer. So, gather some friends. Plan a lunch. Let Les know your available for work. Sled Work: Les needs you. He has all equip ment ready for the winter, but will need you to make equipment improvements, even as these week’s roll along. Idea: I’m learning that Les sends Jeremy, Alvin, Dave and I’m sure others out on work missions. I bet if Les is off working with Danny and you bump into one of these guys instead, they will know what’s coming up for club work and you could get invited. Have some fun and get invited. Groomer Training: Think about this. Les will train one member at a time, on our well equipped, professional groomer, the Snow Rabbit. That way once trained, a two-person trained groomer team with their food and sup plies, could take the groomer out to do import ant trail grooming work, approved by Les, for as long as planned. If you are interested enough to start training, which will include driving in a straight line and at the correct speed, please talk to Les. This is an important, serious, easy, assignment. Thank you everyone for taking the time to read about our snowmobile club and our special little town. Please ride our trails and make our town your town and stop on your snowmobile adventure. I guarantee you will be back. mikeremillard42@gmail.com Please take the time to cut out the below

The January MSA Directors meeting, hosted by the Stump Thumpers (here are a few of the crew), was a great success and we had a lot of fun. The food was good, the company was amazing, and we met our match for the Lafland Scholarship fund. We are sincerely hoping that others will pick up the torch and connect with their local Masonic Lodges to continue building this fund in honor of our dear friends Larry and Eileen. EASTERN REGION

EBEEMEE sc Ebeemee Twp, ME

And here we are… again! The good, no great news is, around here anyway, we have fantastic ice conditions on our water cross ings. As for snow, well, it’s here and there throughout our trail system. I am hoping by the time this shows up in your mailboxes, conditions will have greatly improved for the whole state. Pete (say hi Pete) pointed out that we have received over 20” of snow but Mother Nature took most of it away. Most of our trails have a great ice base so that should provide some great riding once we get more snow. Our awesome IT team (Dan Sullivan) has been working hard to link everything up and get us online with a card reader for the B-Me Snack Shack. We have our PayPal all set up and we also have a GoFundMe page set up to help to defray some of the cost over runs on the bridge project. We count ourselves as very fortunate to have saved up for some of the projects already planned. One of those projects was to sell off the three older sled drags and replace them a new sled groomer. We purchased a beautiful new mini “Mogul Master” style drag manufactured by Maine’s own Outlaw Manufacturing out of Brewer. I bet you can’t guess what color powder coating we chose! It’s a beauty and is equipped with a solar collector to keep the battery up and ready for action. Nice work Troy! The B-Me Snack Shack is up and running again and putting out some culinary delights for all to enjoy! And let’s not slight the incred ible camaraderie we all have. It is so much fun meeting new folks and catching up with those we already know. We have restocked our merch and it is available at our Shopify Store (link on our website) as well as Saturdays 11-3 at the Snack Shack. We are posting our trail reports on the Katah din Area Snowmobile Trails KAST page as well as are usual updates on our Facebook page. Keep the faith folks, As Dave Silvia always said, “It will come, the snow always comes”! Thank you all, Laurie

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