Local snowmobile club to raise funds after fire destroys warming hut
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The fire that razed 11,000 hectares of forest near Carrick, Woodridge, Badger, and St Labre this summer also destroyed the many ATV and snowmobile trails in the Piney area. The South East Sno-Riders Inc. club is hoping a social will raise enough funds to pay for a new warming hut that was lost along one of the trails.
“The shelter we’re estimating it will cost us close to $30,000 to rebuild it,” said club president Mitch Gobeil. “We had a little bit of insurance on it, but we didn’t have enough insurance and we’re going to have to review the insurance on all of our shelters to figure out our costs.”
After a $1,000 deductible, the club will get more than $5,000 to rebuild the shelter. It has five warming huts on its trail system.
The club has been in operation for 35 years and has more than 100 members. Gobeil said he hasn’t been able to check on the 950 kilometres of trails that the club grooms as there are fire restrictions in place, but he estimates it might take a week to clean the trails of fire debris.
“In 2012, when we had the big ice storm in a big portion of southeastern Manitoba, and it was a bigger mess than what this will be. And we got them opened up in time. It took lots of work, many weeks but we had a fairly dedicated bunch of volunteers.”
The impact on tourism from losing the trails and the hut can’t be underestimated. Gobeil said that many snowmobilers come to Piney to ride the trails, which stretch all the way to Buffalo Point First Nation.
“Clearview Co-op operation in South Junction people are always stopping there for gas and food and such like that, and they’re stopping in at Silver Birch Resort at Moose Lake Provincial Park, and they also go to Buffalo Point because we groom up to Buffalo Point First Nation so the restaurant out there people go out there and have a bite to eat and keep on snowmobiling.”
The fundraiser for the warming shelter for South East Sno-Riders Inc. will be held on Oct. 25 at the Woodridge Community Club at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 and for those who can’t make it but would like to support the club, tickets are $10. To find out where to buy tickets visit the club’s Facebook page.