Snowmobiling in late March!!!

I had quite an interesting ride yesterday. We left the parking lot in Heartwellville with almost 8" of fresh powder on top of Saturday's substantial snowfall. Trails had been groomed since saturday's snow, but this new powder had very little traffic before us. We made it up to the Route 7 corridor in Woodford, but because of the conditions, decided that instead of going to Jenks like we originally planned, we'd head over to Peter's in Heath MA. Here's a pic at the corridor intersection in woodford:

The groomers hadn't been out toward Harriman Reservoir since before Saturday's snow, so it was a bumpy ride. We were one of the first out that way after saturday night's snow, so there was a lot of power covering the bumpy ride. My next pic shows my sled parked next to the damn, followed by two pics of the trail. The first pic is where we came from, and the second was where we were headed.



One of the sleds in my group is a Polaris 440 race sled, so we have limited range. Much to our surprise, when we got to Peter's store, we discovered that he was out of gas. This posed a major problem. We decided to ride over to Charlemont for food and gas. Specifically, we were headed for the Hawk's Nest Pub in the Warfield House. The problem was that nobody had a Massachusetts trail map, and the markings and signs for the trail system in that area absolutely suck. Here's a pic that I took somewhere in MA:

Every intersection has signs pointing you to other trail names instead of towns/destinations, which is completely useless if you don't have a map. Because nobody had been over the trail yet, we were on our own trying to find our way, which was made even more difficult by the poor markings on the trails that wound through the woods and endless fields. At one point about 3 miles from our destination, the trail came to a road, and we couldn't find where it picked up on the other side of the road. After riding down miles of paved road, we got directions from a local who got us back on track. Eventually we landed at the Hawks Nest and had an absolutely FANTASTIC lunch. This is definately a destination to go to! While we were there we tried to figure out how to gas up. The station at the bottom of the hill is closed on Sundays, and the other station is on the other side of town, and the Charlemont Police aren't real fond of sleds riding up the road. After a few calls, the gas station owner got back from snowmobiling and opened his store to help out some fellow riders. I don't know his name, but he gets a big thanks from me! He's the fellow on the right side of the pic of me getting gas.

After gassing up, we headed home. We got back into Vermont through the Yankee Rowe power lines, but on the way home decided to head to the Readsboro Inn instead of going right home. Here's a couple pics from the intersection on the power lines.


After refreshing there, we headed up through Readsboro on Howe Pond Road and up to the backside of Dutch Hill. Dutch hill is only a half mile from my home, but I had never been up there. The view from the top of the hill is absolutely breathtaking.


After leaving Dutch Hill, we went across the street into Alpenwald village and back to the Heartwellville parking lot. All in all, about an 80 mile trip. I enjoyed going to a lot of new places that I had never been to.