Snowmobilers ready to romp

DANIELS SUMMIT, Wasatch County — A year ago, there was hardly enough snow at this time to pack a trail, let alone cover bushes and fallen trees.

Trail groomers remained parked, snowmobiles sat on trailers and snowmobilers waited — impatiently — for snow.

This year there is snow. There's enough snow to cover the tallest bushes and bury the largest logs in the high country, and enough to get the snowmobile season off to one of its earliest starts in a half-dozen years.

Even before the weekend storm, snowmobile riding along the ridges out of Daniels Summit Lodge and through the open play fields around Strawberry Valley was good. More than a foot of new snow fell over the weekend.

There's enough snow now, said one rider, "You can get your machine stuck if you're not careful . . . and it's been a long time since I've had to worry about that this early in the season."

"The earliest we've had the groomers out the past five to six years," said Alan Spencer, park ranger at Starvation State Park, "is the 15th of December . . . and even into January in some areas.

"This year we made our first run on Nov. 28, from Co-op Creek to Lake Creek Summit. That started the grooming season for us."

State Parks and Recreation, over the past few years, has groomed about 10,000 miles of trails over a winter season. Starting off this early, said Eric Stucki, off-highway vehicle education specialist, means groomers could log as many as 15,000 miles of grooming within the state's nine snowmobile complexes in a season.

The more popular trails are groomed between three and four times a week. Lesser-used trails are groomed from one to two times.

At an average speed of about six miles per hour, about 50 miles of trails can be smoothed and manicured in a day.

There are more than 30,000 registered snowmobiles in Utah. Stucki said the numbers have leveled off because of low snow years, "but with the promising start, that could change this year. We could see numbers increase."

The availability of rental snowmobiles in recent years has increased the number of people able to ride. There are snowmobile rental operations near all of the nine snowmobile complexes — Hardware Ranch near Logan, Wasatch Mountain near Midway, Mirror Lake out of Kamas, Uinta Basin north of Vernal, Scofield/Skyline Drive west of Price, Ephraim/Manti to the east of the two towns, Fish Lake east of Richfield, Cedar Mountain east of Cedar City, and Strawberry.