Snowdog to groom Truro trails
Town, province and bike club share the cost of a new machine
Fat bikers will be able to get out sooner after a snowfall on trails in and around Truro.
The Hub Cycle Spokebenders, the Town of Truro, County of Colchester and the provincial Department of Health have teamed up to buy a Snowdog, a small-tracked vehicle pulling a sled, which they will use for grooming narrow forest trails.
The 13-horsepower machine and sled cost $5,000, with the bikers, the municipalities and province each paying a third of the project.
“We’ve been looking at these on the Internet, we’ve seen other places use them and thought wouldn’t it be great to have one here,” said Bruce Roberts, of Hub Cycle in Truro.
Roberts says bikers can move along OK in shallow or firm snow but often end up waiting for a thaw-freeze cycle to firm up the surface of deeper snow.
“Once it freezes we can go anywhere, but with the Snowdog,
if someone has time to do the grooming, we could be out the next day,” he said.
He says several members of the Spokebenders are willing to volunteer as groomers but just who will do the grooming hasn’t been worked out yet with the town. Town staff currently grooms trails for skiers in Victoria Park and the Cobequid Trail in Lower Truro.
Roberts says bikers are careful to avoid those tracks.
“We would wreck them so we stay off them,” said Roberts. “But some of those trails, I hardly ever see any ski tracks out there so they could groom some of them for fat bikes.”
Town employee Brian Sullivan does the ski grooming for the town with a snowmobile pulling a drag that is two metres wide.
“I can’t get into a lot of the single track trails – just recently I came to one of the narrow bridges and the snowmobile won’t fit,” says Sullivan. “With the Snowdog we can fit on the single track trails, we can turn around trees, we’ll be able to get to more of those places.”
Roberts spoke to Larry Anthony, maintenance supervisor with Truro’s recreation department, and together they applied to and were approved by the province for funding through the community recreation capital grant at the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage. Peter McCracken, regional manager of community sport and recreation with the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage, said the province likes to fund projects that fulfil a community need.
“This project will help create more active living and recreation opportunities here in and around Truro,” said McCracken.
“It is particularly important that this will support a local group and allow them to do more of the activity they like to do.”