March 2023 Grooming Update

19 March 2023 – Klondike Snowmobile Association

Spring is quickly arriving in the Yukon Territory, and the end of grooming season is fast approaching.

So far this year has been busy in the grooming department. Our volunteers have spent hundreds of hours grooming multi-use trails for you, we hosted a groomer operator demo day for some potential new operators, and acquired a new grooming snowmobile.

Our volunteers are still out on the trails grooming and expect to be until at least April, however current snow and weather conditions are now limiting what we can do. During the nights and early mornings the snow is quite hard and limits the effectiveness of our groomers, and in the afternoons it’s warming up to the point where the snow becomes heavy and wet which often snowballs up and sticks to the groomer drag instead of to the trail base. We’ll do what we can but grooming season will be winding down soon.

At the end of December we took out a few potential new groomer operators for a demo day which went quite well. We had planned to do a second one for anyone interested who wasn’t available on the first day but unfortunately our volunteers got busy and this didn’t happen early enough in the season to make it worth doing. It’s still a thing though, the board has unanimously agreed that we want to do another groomer demo day or two early next season and hopefully get our new groomer volunteers out on the trails!

As for our new grooming machine our brand new Skandic is nearing the end of its break in mileage and plans are in place to do some minor mods to it this spring which will allow us to tow our existing trail grooming equipment. This machine will be out on the trails grooming for you next season, and once again a huge thank you to Yukon Honda, Community Development Fund, and everyone else who helped make this happen!

There’s still some winter left, enjoy it while you can…