June might seem a strange time to talk about snowmobiles, but not for Tom D’Ambrosio. Summer is prime riding time.
D’Ambrosio is an avid hand cyclist who enjoys the northern end of the Fred Meijer White Pine Trail, in particular the 17 miles between Cadillac and LeRoy. He’s apt to ride it a couple of dozen times during the season.
What galls him is that in winter snowmobiles with studs have regularly scored its surface. For that to happen, they were on the trail during periods with less than four inches of snow. Four is required by the state in order to protect the surface. Signs have been placed along the trail saying that clearly.
D’Ambrosio, of Houghton Lake, says the wear slows him down. Worse is that the $2 million paving project was completed just two seasons ago.
“It’s to the point that there is a groove down the entire 17 miles,” said D’Ambrosio, who was paralyzed in an accident in 1993 and now rides the trail using a hand cycle.
The wear has been acknowledged by Michigan Department of Natural Resources trail managers and planners and also by the Michigan Snowmobile Association. It is a thorn in the side of the Friends of the White Pine Trail, the group instrumental in raising the money for paving.
The Friends’ website, whitepinetrail.com, has photos of patches on holes made by vandals on snowmobiles who used their studded tracks to grind holes in the surface down to the gravel below.
Dave Heyboer, chairman of the Friends, would like studs banned on trails.
“We’re firmly in favor of snowmobile use,” said Heyboer, a snowmobiler himself. “But we are very strongly against studded tracks on the White Pine Trail. The damage in just a short time is serious and unacceptable.”
Bill Manson, executive director of the Michigan Snowmobile Association, sees the wear differently. “It’s normal and acceptable wear unless there was something changed in the asphalt formula,” he said.
A special, hardened formula was developed to mitigate the problem. Manson and others in the snowmobile community played a role in its development.
