Welcome to February. Lets all hope the Groundhog sees his shadow to give us that six more weeks of winter. I was born in Punxsutawney where the Groundhog actually does his stuff. Might say I have groundhog in my blood, whatever that means. Also in February is Valentines Day, February 14th. Remember to get your special girl that special something so you can continue to ride the rest of the winter and still be on speaking terms come spring. That is of course for those of you who have a difficult time getting your better half out onto the trails in the wintertime.
Some exciting news, for me anyway. Recently I have been appointed the Regional Director of Region 11. I am very honored to be considered capable of doing the job. Not sure what the job is yet, but I will be getting into it sometime in February, after the Winterfest. Speaking of the Winterfest, everything is progressing very well. I am writing this newsletter during our January thaw. I think this is actually good as opposed to the past two years where winter was nothing but one big thaw. Now if we can get back to that cold snap and have one more dump of snow before the Winterfest, we will be right on track. The snow guns have been used and worked very well from eyewitness reports. As soon as the weather turns cold again, they will be out in force making snow. For those of you who have signed up to work at the Winterfest, I want to thank you in advance. Please do remember to show up when you signed up for. If something changes and you cannot make it, please give Dennis Smouse a call. Several new vendors have signed up this year. Hope to see ya there!
To close the Winterfest, the last thing we do is draw the winning ticket for the Arctic Cat Z370. Hopefully some of you have been selling these tickets like crazy as our sales are down this year. We have just a little over $1,000 turned in so far. All tickets have to be turned in on Saturday February 6th, NO LATER!!! We have to get the money and tickets to the PSSA (who will be there) so the tickets can be put in the barrel. If you cannot make it to the Winterfest, mail the tickets and the money to Patty Weaver, RD 2 Box 356, Wysox, PA 18854 and we will take care of them for you. I have this round can at the end of my desk I put the tickets into come on no one believes that, do they???? For those of you who received tickets with your newsletter, if you do not want them yourself, and you prefer not to sell them, stick them in an envelope and send them back to the same address and we can probably sell them at the Winterfest. Funny how fast the tickets go when the sled sits right there. Until the Winterfest, the sled is residing at Colton's Alba Grocery & Gas. They advertise the best wings in Alba.
Lets run through the events list. The Go North!! Trip was held as scheduled. For those of you who belong to the PSSA, there is a large article and pictures in this months issue of the Keystone Snowmobiler on the trip. On a down note we had a couple of sleds with problems this year. However the place we stayed at, Steelhead Lodge, made that as painless as ossible. All we had to do was call Big Earl and he came and got them. Then on Friday, New Years Day, we got up to Roger Turners "double dog dared it to snow" foot and a half of new snow. With over twenty sleds in our group, we had the ride of our lives as we had to break trail for about 30 miles to get to the Tug Hill Plateau. Our trusty guide, Ken Murphy (swear he must be part bloodhound), did tire of breaking trail and we had to get my son Jim, who loves to play in deep snow, to break for a ways. That 10 or 15 miles of breaking trail made Jim’s year. It was extremely cold with temperatures dipping to 15 below on the plateau. Even with a couple of frostbite cases, all I heard were good comments about the trip. We were all so pleased with the Steelhead Lodge, we have booked with them for next New Years. More news soon when we get it figured out.
Next we were supposed to have our Fun Run on January 17th. This was cancelled because of trail uncertainty. More on this later. There were a few that did show up and figure how to ride to Tiadaghton State Park on legal trails. And I am writing this newsletter on the weekend we were supposed to go to the West Pike Motor Lodge to ride and all I have seen is rain. With hopefully a lot of winter left, we do not have any official events scheduled. When the snow returns, we will finally get that Fun Run set up. On a week end we are going to have one, we will try and put a blurp in the "Items of Interest" in the Daily Review newspaper and on the Voice Mailbox (by Wednesday night 9:00 pm at the latest). So keep your fingers crossed. Here is the complete list of club events. This list can grow or shrink depending on snow and ambition.
Feb 6th - 3rd Annual Winterfest in Troy, PA. Your club has signed up to be the main provider of food thru both days. Hope you will be able to attend. This is how our club fills its treasury every Feb 7th year. A couple of new ideas being worked on to keep the excitement from the first two years. Guaranteed large amounts of snow this year!
National Snowmobile Safety Education Week was the declared by Governor Ridge of Pennsylvania to be January 18th to January 24, 1999. A press conference was held on January 20th at the State Capital in Harrisburg. Legislators and Governor Ridge himself was invited. Unfortunately none showed up. Several snowmobiles were present to provide rides to any that did. Even though it was disappointing that none of our legislators took the time to show, I did get to ride a snowmobile on the front lawn of the State Capital Building. Not many can say they have done that; legally! Not only that, it was a 1999 Grand Touring SE donated to the president of the PSSA for the year by Ski Doo with less than 200 miles on it. If I sound excited, it's because I was. I was very impressed with the sled and had a ball running around the yard of the capital. A certain Cat rider (aw come on, I haven't picked on a cat in an issue or two, you probably thought I was mellowing in old age) was also observed taking it for a ride. He did not wait for me to watch as I had to park the truck, which is no small feat in Harrisburg. On return home, a press release was given to our local paper on Thursday that week, but never made it in print. Call them up and ask them why? Maybe next year.
Now for our trails report. If you have not heard by now, there have been a couple of problems with riding your snowmobile around Barclay Mountain the past couple of weeks. The Game Commission has started writing Warning Citations if they catch you snowmobiling on anything other than the designated snowmobile trails around Sunfish Pond. This includes township roads that are marked "No Winter Maintenance". There have been a couple of very tense confrontations between snowmobilers who thought they were in the right and Game Commissioners. At the present, the only legal riding on Barclay Mountain is on designated snowmobile trails. If you look at your map they are marked with a heavy black solid line marked Snowmobile Trail. The dashed lines represent no winter maintenance township roads. As it stands now, if the Game Commission catches you riding on these they are issuing Warning Citations. That would include parking and unloading at the bottom and riding to get to the trails on the top that are legal. The cure? Permission has been obtained from several landowners to ride from the Clubhouse (at Bob Murphys) that will give us access to the trails around Sunfish. This will let us get out through Masten to Tiadaghton State Forest. Several club members took this ride and rode over 100 miles; all legal trails. As a club, we have worked extremely hard to make snowmobiling in Bradford County an enjoyable and safe sport. To this end we have worked to accomplish this the right way. Right now the opinion of the Game Commission of our club is very low. What I am trying to say is we need to build that relationship with the Game Commission back to where we, the club, thought it was. That means we have to follow the rules as they are prescribed at the present time. Don't ride around gates. Don't be on township roads. Don't ride in the open fields on Barclay (they are feeding grounds). If a Game Commissioner stops you, don't tell him because you belong to the club you are allowed to ride there. With that being said, we are stil oing to be very active in achieving our original goal which is stated at the bottom of every membership application; "The Scenic Mountain Snow Riders organization has been organized to promote family participation in snowmobiling. Its goal is to open and create trails in the Bradford County region to make snowmobiling safer and more enjoyable for the entire family." As a club we will be at Franklin Townships next meeting on February 1st. We have our presentation ready to ask them to consider marking several Franklin Township roads as dual-purpose roads. This would give snowmobilers access to legally ride on so designated roads and make it safer to do so in the process. What will the outcome be? Good question. It has been done successfully in many other townships across Pennsylvania. The laws are written to remove liability from townships that mark the roads for dual purpose. That should work in our favor.
Meetings are still the second Wednesday of every month at Stewart's Family Restaurant on the Golden Mile in Wysox at 7:00 pm in the back room. That makes the next meeting, February 10, 1999. Hope you will be able to come out and join us. If you are on line, don't forget about our web sight; http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Rapids/6504/ . We have a new webmaster. He is David Fries a newer member who accompanied the club on our Go North!! Trip. He rides a real nice sled. (Yellow in color.) He is very close to getting our new and improved sight up and running. By the time you get the newsletter he expects it to be so, (if I ever get him the information he has requested). The new on line address is going to be http://www.goldns.net/dave/smsr/ . I have seen parts of it he has sent me on line. It is going to look exceptional when he is done.
Don't forget to check out our advertisers this month. Remember, they are the ones that pay for this newsletter to come out, (no remarks Glen) so mention you saw their ad in our newsletter. We have a new advertiser this month in the STEELHEAD LODGE MOTEL, SMOKEHOUSE & TACKLE SHOP located at 3178 State Route 13, Pulaski, NY. This is the placed mentioned earlier where we stayed for our Go North!! Trip. As I am always asking for something from another author to put in our newsletter, Karen Penny wrote up the following; Located on the Salmon River, between Pulaski and Altmar, with easy access to the 280 miles of groomed snowmobile trails of Oswego County, the STEELHEAD LODGE is owned and operated by Earl (Big Earl) & Karen Penney. We provide an eight-room motel with private bath in each room. There is a large gathering room with TV, Pool Table, and Card Table. There is plenty of parking for trailers and vehicles. We also provide private access to the Salmon River for the Fisherman!! Pulaski will be holding a SNCROSS RACE on Feb. 13. & 14, 1999. We are in the process of developing a web site @ http://members.xoom.com/steelheadtoo/lodge.htm . Thanks for requesting this information. We look forward to seeing you again. She forgot to mention the coffee and muffins that found their way to the gathering room each morning. It was one of the Turners (Roger maybe?) that commented on how good they were. Check out their ad and give them a call if going north.
As always, remember this is your newsletter. If you have anything you would like to say in print, write it up. It will be printed word for word (within the bounds of good taste). I have had a lot of fun writing this newsletter the past couple of years. I get the feeling from some who I have talked to that they feel they have no recourse when I start to say some disparaging words against a certain brand of sled or two. It's a darn good thing I am not biased in any way toward one brand or another. (You caught me, I was grinning from ear to ear as I wrote this paragraph.) So I have opened the door, anyone want to fire the first shot???
Don't forget our Want Ads section is changing. If you want your ad to remain in, you have to call Dennis and renew your request monthly. If I don't hear from you, the ad gets pulled. As you might notice, I did not hear from anyone this month.
Do your snow dance. And remember to ride safe today so you can ride again tomorrow. Heard from Babs before the thaw. I think I got her point. Your officers for the 98-99 riding season:
President: Dennis Smouse 265-8073
Vice President: Jim Weaver 247-2823
Secretary: Vickie Turner 265-7733
Treasurer: Patti Weaver 247-2823
Club Voice Mail Box (call 24 hours a day) 265-7004
