If you're a local person interested in getting into snowmobiling, you'll want to join the Souris River Snowmobile Club, the volunteer organization responsible for maintaining the trails in the area.

The club's vice president, Rick Hallberg, said there is over 200 km of trail around Weyburn, all groomed by a BR350 Bombardier SAT, a 2012 the club purchased a couple of years ago to replace the previous machine.

"It's basically exactly what you see on the big ski hills and the mountains that they're preparing ski hills with and we're pulling about a 26 foot drag that helps to level out the trail and fill in the rest so that in the end it almost looks like a pretty well smooth road that you're right driving down."

This is, of course, for safety reasons, but it doesn't come cheap.

"They're really expensive. To buy a new one, you're probably looking at three or $400,000," he said, noting they got theirs in Calgary. "We did a lot of fundraising for a lot of years to be able to buy the one we have now, but it was still $100,000 piece of equipment for us."

snocat

As Hallberg explained, when you buy a license plate for your snowmobile, that also gives you a trail pass for the trails in the province.

"That gives you the opportunity to ride on any of the groomed trails in Saskatchewan, and I believe also Manitoba, so that portion of your license plate that goes to the the trail fund is around $110 and all that money is collected by SGI and that money is turned over to the Sask Snowmobile Association, and that's split up between a bunch of the different clubs. I believe there's 50 clubs in the province."

He said since the trail fund covers only some of the costs to do the trails, the club is always looking for sponsorship.

"The trail map sponsorship is just getting finalized here. Right now we've got three different levels of sponsorship. There's a gold sponsorship level for businesses or people who want to donate $1,000 or more. A silver level which is $500 or more and a bronze level which is 250 or more. So there's lots of sponsorship opportunities for for different businesses. The trail maps we print up are free for all snowmobilers. They can be picked up at the snowmobile dealerships or in our warm up shacks."

Hallberg said they also do some fundraisers.

"We generally have a Derby every year, but with the COVID rules, we just have to figure out how we can make that happen. But we are planning on doing a Derby sometime this winter," he explained. "We've got a meeting on Tuesday night this week so hopefully we can discuss that and come up with the dates."

Groomed trails are marked well.

"Once we get out in the open fields, we have to put a reflective stake on each side of the trail, every 100 meters, so when you're driving down there at night, it's almost like you're flying a plane on a runway with all the reflective stakes you can see out in the distance," said Hallberg. "We probably put up between 4,000 and 8,000 stakes every fall and then have to take them all down every spring, so there's probably about I would say 6 or 7 truckloads of stakes that have to be installed and taken down every year."

Amazingly, all this work, each year, is done by volunteers.

"We're always looking for more volunteers and people to join the club. We don't charge anything to join the club. We try to do meetings pretty much once a month in the winter season we usually go in a club ride every year where all the club members that are available to go take off on a a club ride somewhere. This year, I believe we're going up to Nipawin, to Tobin Lake."

Hallberg explained just how far and wide the local groomed trails extend.

"We groomed just over 200 kilometers of trail around the City of Weyburn, with a few access points to get into the City, one being to get into Prairie Wind Recreation and one to get into Terry's Cycle, and then there's access to the Co-op gas station on 18th Street at the 13 Highway to get into there, and it goes all the way up to Jiffy Mart, and that's where the trail ends coming in the City there's no snowmobiling past that point, and then over on the other end of the city by McDonald's we have access there. It actually goes all the way up on the South side of 39 Highway pretty much right up to the Travelodge. So we have access to fuel food and hotels and then as we go out of town we go out towards Griffin and once we get to Griffin we go north to Creelman over to Fillmore than up to Corning and then down all the way to Stoughton and then back to Griffin."

"We've got a pretty good loop of trail there, we go across a lot of land owners' land, so they give us permission to run our trail across that land, so we kind of ask that people try to stay on the trail as much as possible, because the access we have is strictly just for the the trail itself. It's not for free-range riding wherever the guy wants to sort of thing, trying to keep the trail strictly to snowmobile."

The trails are for registered snowmobiles only, and for good reason.

"We don't want any side by sides or quads, things like that, on the trails, the wheeled vehicles, and even if they have tracks they're not allowed on the trails, because they don't have any registration and don't have insurance."

Warm up shacks?

"We do have four warm up shacks, people can stop at them, crank up the wood stove, and warm up, and maybe cook some sausage or hot dogs or something," he shared. "They are open to the snowmobiling public to use whenever they want. They're not locked up or anything. There's one just on the loop around Weyburn, one at Griffin, one just north of Creelman, then another one up between Creelman and Corning."

He said they even have bathrooms.

"Those plastic port-a-potties we have at each warm up shack, also solar lighting, so there's lights in there, if you're in there in the evening."

Hallberg said the club has been posting more lately on social media.

Find them HERE.

The Sask Snowmobile Website, he noted, also has an interactive map.

"If you go on that snow website, download that interactive map and it it'll show you what trails are groomed in the province, how long it's been since they've been groomed, whether the trails are opened or closed," he explained. "It's probably five or six years old now, and it's got all the trails for the entire province and they're colour-coded. So different colors reflect how long it's been since the trails been groomed, but green is, I think, within the last five days, and there's another color that goes from 5 to 10 and the other one I think is over 10 days. And then if it's red, it's closed." 

Find that HERE.