One thing is for sure, it certainly looks a lot like Christmas outside this year.
Last year we had green Christmas and there were boats on the water on Christmas day,” said Shawn Flindall.
“Very different this year with easily a couple of feet of snow having come down and sitting in the bush so it really looks much more ‘Christmassy’ much more ‘snowmobiley' out there.”
But Flindall, the President of the North Bay Snowmobile Club, believes in some ways that Green Christmas last year was better than the current snowy landscape.
“This year we’ve got a whole pile of snow, which is insulating everything, and nothing underneath it is frozen,” he said.
“There’s no frost in the ground at all at this point and it is really dangerous conditions out there so just like the OPP, we are saying stay off the trails. Until we give the green light, hold off and be patient. I will tell you nobody wants to get out there more than I do but we really need to be patient at this point.”
Flindall says lakes like Trout Lake still have open spots and many of the swamps and ponds may look snow covered, but underneath conditions are not there for a heavy snowmobile to ride on.
“We really need some cold weather at this point to penetrate through the snow and get those ponds and swamps frozen because we’ve already had some equipment and a couple of our guys get wet trying to get some equipment through these ponds and swamps and it’s not going very well,” he said.
Flindall says the problem exists across the province and he believes some trails will start opening in the next 7 to 10 days.
“The danger level is really high now, I mean it was a short season last year but the way it happened was really ideal. We had no snow on the ground and then finally in January it got really cold for about a week, froze everything up, and then the snow came. It was a perfect setup for snowmobiling.”
