The Our Town - Clarenville Blog by Paul Tilley

From The Packet - Jan 12/2011 Many of us are waiting, as patiently as possible, for more snow to fall.  My Ski-Doo is still in the garage - likely yours is as well. There was a time when I use to enjoy the anticipation of the first trip on Ski-Doo, but as of late, the joy of owning a snowmobile and riding it has been sucked out by the constant drum of what I call "The great trail pass debate". Few would argue that the age of the groomed trail has come.  If the sport is to prosper as the demographic of riders get older and more bump adverse, we need to have groomed trails.  The challenge of this luxury however is determining who's going to pay and how its going to be done. The Trail Pass system and the volunteer snowmobile associations were "concocked" to overcome this challenge.  Trail pass revenues were supposed to pay for the grooming and the associations are suppose to gather the manpower to run the groomers.  On both counts it isn'...