Rangeley Lakes Snowmobile Club
PO Box 950
Rangeley, ME 04970
Rangeleysnowmobile.com
 
Greetings to all of our members and interested visitors.  It is getting close to the riding season.  We are allowed to open trails on December 15th. We have snow on the ground. It is forecast to be very cold for the next week and we are watching a snow storm possibility for Monday. If we get 8-10 inches or more, we should be able to begin limited trail openings for the weekend of December 17-18.  Check our web site.
 HELP US.  Riding on private roads and on closed trails is a major problem for the club and its relationships with generous landowners. It has already been an issue this past weekend.  Do not ride until we have stated on the web site that the trails are open.  We have not had an opportunity to open trails before the Christmas Break for a few years so please Respect Landowner Wishes. Having to close a trail because of snowmobile trespassing will not help start a great season.
All the signs for an early winter and early snowmobile season are evolving.  Smaller ponds and lakes have skimmed over with ice. The big lakes are wide open but showing signs that they could freeze up.  We have a few inches of snow everywhere and more in some of the higher terrain.  There is no sign of any thaws in the near term weather so what we have for snow and ice should be here all winter. All great news. Remember that the early season is the most dangerous for riding on water bodies and for encountering water ditches and wash outs. Stay off the lakes and ponds and ride cautiously on the woods trails.
We have put many labor and machine hours into trail maintenance and we continue to work to complete our projects. The biggest news is that we will likely be opening a reroute of ITS 89 by New Years.  A lot of work has been done but more remains. The new route will be close to the old section of ITS 89 that was closed by a landowner in Dallas PLT.  If all goes to plan, our total cost of this project will be $13,000.  So, if you feel generous, a little extra donation to the RLSC will be greatly appreciated.  The owners at Rev-IT-Up, Julie and Mike Ferguson, worked very hard to find several routes and to try to get  landowner permissions for at least one of those routes. The process was not easy but finally with their hard work, good fortune and generous landowners, one of the routes was approved for it entire run.  Mike Koob, Lee Libby and Mike Ferguson have already put in many hours clearing, brushing, excavating and building bridges to get the trail opened. Today, about a mile remains to be worked on. Stay tuned and be sure to thank each of these people for their donations of time, equipment and materials. 
Our club member activities have been great successes. We hope some of you have been able to participate. There were over 100 people at the Turkey Dinner Landowner Appreciation meeting at Bald Mountain Camps. We have nearly 80 reservations for the Christmas Party at Loon Lodge.  Snodeo planning is progressing. Also, the membership folks, Mary, Karen and Missy, have done a great job getting memberships out and processed.  We have over 350 business and Individual club memberships to date and the season has not even begun (it is close though!).
 Stayed up to date with the web site for trail information and especially with ice information.  We will update the web site frequently, daily if needed, during the early season. We hope to see many of you over the Holidays.
 
Steve Dudley, RLSC Reporter

Rangeley Lakes Snowmobile Club
PO Box 950
Rangeley, ME 04970
Rangeleysnowmobile.com
 
Greetings to our members.  Greetings to all of you who have an interest in snowmobile trips to the Rangeley Region.  As you read this, we all hope that we are beginning to build a snow base and that the lakes are beginning to freeze over. The RLSC is ready for winter.
Our web site will be your best source for up to date snow conditions and for viewing the snow and lake conditions in real time via our several web cams. 
We thank the many of you who attended our Turkey landowner appreciation dinner on November 12 at Bald Mountain Camps. It was a big gathering and good food. The event gave many of you a chance to meet and hear from our new officers and Board members. Our next event is the Christmas Party at Loon Lodge. Check the web site for details.
SNODEO planning is fully underway with many events. It occurs January 19-21. Rave-X, snow-cross races, radar runs, Casino Night, Chili-chowder cook-off, fireworks and many other events are planned. Again, check the web site for details.
Several more events are scheduled for this season. These include the Tri-State
Reciprocity Weekend on January 27-29. This event allows riders to snowmobile in Maine,  New Hampshire and Vermont fi they possess a registration in any one of these states. It is a very busy weekend here in Rangeley. From here, most riders can visit both New Hampshire and eastern Vermont in a single day ride or travel the whole weekend. On February 18th, the Cystic Fibrosis Ride will occur. This event is growing each year and it is a great day to see all the snowmobile riders that participate. On February 25th, the Winter Fly-In occurs on Mooselookmeguntic Lake hosted by the RLSC and Bald Mountain Camps. After this fun event, we offer our Annual Roast beef Dinner at the Undercroft on Main Street in Rangeley. Information for all these events will be posted on the web site.
Please check our web site for trail openings in December. No trails open before December 15th regardless of how much snow we have. Let us hope we have a lot by then. Thanks for reading.
 
Steve Dudley-Club Reporter

Rangeley Lakes Snowmobile Club
PO Box 950
Rangeley, ME 04970
Rangeleysnowmobile.com
 
Greetings to our members.  Greetings to all of you who have an interest in snowmobile trips to the Rangeley Region.  Despite the warm weather so far this late summer and fall, the club is hard at work getting ready for the season. 
There is a lot to report as it has been a busy off-season.  Our newly elected officers began their terms in June. Mike Koob is the Club President. Mike takes over from Brian Kelly. Thanks to Brian for all his hard work. If anyone thinks being a Snowmobile Club President is easy. Try it. Please thank Brian for his time as president. Thank Mike Koob for taking the job on. 
Mary Brey is our new Vice President. Mary replaces Mike Koob. Missy Wakefield was elected again as Secretary. Karen Seaman was again elected to serve as Treasurer. Congratulations and thanks to all these generous people. Next time, we will discuss our Board of Directors.
Mike Koob has set an aggressive agenda for the club this year. He is committed to providing the best trail riding in Maine. To do this, we have increased our equipment inventory, looked for the best groomer operators in the region and we have started improving trails that needed work. A bad snow year like this past season has one good outcome, it reveals trail problems.
First, we have upgraded our grooming fleet to four Pisten Bullys. We purchased a new tractor last season and we purchased a used Pisten Bully Edge this summer. The equipment was offered for sale by the Pittsburg Ridge Runners in New Hampshire. One look and it was very apparent that the groomer was in excellent shape and at a bargain price. New Pisten Bullys are now costing well over $200,000. We bought this machine for $70,000.  We now have four groomers all capable of handling our terrain and snow conditions. This will allow the RLSC to groom more trail miles on a daily basis, especially on weekends and holidays. 
Unfortunately, all this grooming equipment does not run without an operator. We are pleased that we have developed an excellent grooming crew over the past years. We expect all these folks to be back and eager to help the club meet its grooming and trail quality goals. It takes a special type of person to run this equipment effectively in the dark and cold of Rangeley winter nights.  These folks do this night after night for the entire winter season.  We are fortunate to have the crew we have. Thanks to each of them and to Lee Libby, our Trail Master, who works all the grooming details for us.
Our plans for trail improvement plan is on track as the leaves begin to fall.  Mike Koob invested in a tracked machine with a brush grinding attachment. Mike is making this available to the club.  One of our most difficult tasks is keeping trail width. Brush growth even here in the mountains is a major problem. Controlling this growth by hand is slow and the number of people willing to do this work is very limited. With this new machine, we anticipate we will be able to accomplish much more work and achieve our goal of recovering trail width. A wide trail is safer, it is easier to groom and it stays smooth longer. We are currently in the process of performing some significant upgrades to ITS 84/89 from Oquossoc to the east end of Rangeley Lake. We are also targeting most if not all of the brushy trails north of Rangeley.
 
We will provide more trail information in our next newsletter. However, we are sorry to say that there has been no progress on finding a solution to the portion of ITS 89 that was closed last year. We still plan to re-route ITS 89 from Rev-It-Up to Oquossoc and then route it back over to East Kennebago Mountain. We do have permission from the State Trail Bureau to mark an “ITS 89A” from Rev-It-Up to Rangeley along the north shore of Rangeley Lake.  We planned to do this last season too. However, snow and ice conditions just did not help us with this plan.  Our lakes were rarely ridable last season.
A few reminders. Please get your membership renewals sent back in.  If you wish to join the RLSC, we have an easy on-line process or you can download an application from our web site. Also, our next club meeting and dinner is a turkey dinner at Bald Mountain Camps on November 12th. See our web site for details. More news next month.
Steve Dudley, RLSC Reporter

Greetings to our members and all who read this newsletter.  The weird winter of 2015-16 continues. We will hope for a good wintery end so we can all get some miles on our machines. One positive with the meager snow is that it is easy to keep our trails flat!

We were very fortunate to hit a sweet spot in the winter for our annual Snodeo. This is a major fund raising event for us and for the Rangeley region. We had snow, we had good weather and we had people, very generous people. We raise a lot of money. We will easily pay our first installment on our new Pisten Bully 400 and have some for next year’s payment too.  It takes a lot of work to put on this multiday event The RLSC thanks everyone who helps out. We thank our sponsors, our business members and the Town of Rangeley. Special thanks to the people who show up to help with Casino Night games, kids events, the snowmobile parade, the fireworks, publicity, safety and all else that is Snodeo.

Special thanks to some very hard working folks who do way more than their share: Mary Brey and Missy Wakefield for event planning, Lee, Jonny and Brad for making the Rock Maple racing event happen here in Rangeley and during Snodeo, Larry Koob for his extraordinary auctioneer skills, to Mike Koob who does so much, often behind the scenes, and to the Kelley Family who help on many tasks.

Many thanks to our wonderful, generous members who attend Snodeo year after year and who open their wallets and checkbooks extra wide for our fundraising programs. You help us so much in our work to provide excellence in our trail system. Thanks.

We hope you will all consider attending our final winter Membership Meeting. The details will be on the web site. We hold our elections for club officers and directors during March membership meeting This year, we will also ask for member approval for some changes to our By-laws. Your opinion matters and we value your participation. Besides, we have some fun at our March meeting as we celebrate another season-no matter how it plays out.

Go play on the snow but do it safely.

Steve Dudley,Club Reporter