sporting camps by snowmobile

For decades, ‘sporting camps’ have been providing important services for sportsmen around the world who seek to enjoy the vast wilderness of Maine and Canada. In the early days, sporting camps catered to hunters and fishermen and were rarely open in winter. Fifty years ago snowmobiling brought about many changes to this lifestyle. Trails began to develop, more reliable machines could go farther and offer more accessability. And snowmobiling became a large driver of winter tourism. The sporting camp has evolved in many ways along with the snowmobile in this area.

Today, many camps and lodges are now open throughout the snowmobile season offering food, rooms and gas in remote areas. A network of sporting camps allows snowmobiliers, like myself, to not only travel further afield, but visit new and interesting locations and make long lasting memories.
Based on the packed snowmobile parking lots I‘ve witnessed at these camps, the relationship between sporting camps and snowmobilers is a positive one!

Back in the day
In the early 1900s, there were more than 300 sporting camps in the State of Maine alone, but today there are fewer than 80. In the heyday of the sporting camp industry, visitors traveled by steam boat, railroad, horse drawn stage coach, wagon and canoe. Traveling to one of these remote camps was a multi-day adventure and once you arrived, you would typically stay for weeks.

Today’s Interconnecting Trail System allows an experience for snowmobilers that may not be drawn to deer hunting or trout fishing, and may not have thought of traveling to, or staying at a sporting camp. However, staying in a cabin once visited by President Theodore Roosevelt or boxing champion Jack Dempsey makes for interesting conversation! For many of the sporting camp owners, providing winter services for snowmobilers is a necessity, without which, they might not remain profitable.
“When my parents bought the camps from my Grandmother in the late ’70s, the deer season paid the bills. Now, with declining deer and [fewer] sportsmen being introduced to hunting, deer season just isn’t cutting it anymore. Ourselves, as well as others, have looked to winter activities to make up for this loss of income,” said Matt Libby of Libby’s Camps.

The routes
I ride with a core group of people who really enjoy snowmobiling, and we have been logging miles with some of the best trail conditions I have ever seen in the past few years. One of the things I enjoy about snowmobiling is getting out and visiting new and interesting destinations… I am sometimes surprised by what I find!

Early in February, I rode with friends Mike Murray, Rob Beanland, Roland Voisine and Dave Murphy in the Katahdin Region of Maine. After a great trailside breakfast, we rode off on a large loop starting from Millinocket Lake north on ITS 85, west on ITS 86, then south connecting with local club trail 111. We had previously decided to stop to have lunch at Cole’s Moosehorn Cabins, located on North West Pond, also called “Little Sebois Lake.” We had not visited this business before and its location in reference to our planned trip made it a convenient stop. It seems like whenever I ride, all plans center around meal stops!

As we drove up to the main cabin, we could smell the wood smoke in the air and could see the other snowmobiles parked out in front near the shore of the pond. Stepping inside was like taking a step back in time with deer heads, elk and moose antlers on the wall, a large wood stove, the rustic feeling of the log walls and the old linoleum covering the floor. The centerpiece of this room is the large set of moose antlers wrapped in telegraph wire and the story that goes along with it.
According to the proprietors, the moose was found by Gordon Cole, who along with owning and operating the camps with his wife Barbara, worked on the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. The moose had caught his antlers in some low hanging telegraph and signal wire near a railroad track and got so entangled that he could not escape and died. Cole found the moose, cut the wires and with permission of the local Game Warden, removed the antlers from the dead moose and they have been on display at Cole’s Cabins ever since. In my opinion, these antlers are a “must-see.”

Come one, come all
The vast majority of sporting camps have a main lodge where meals are served and a number of cabins for rent. Along with providing meals for the “sports” that are staying with them, they also serve meals to us excited snowmobile travelers who wish to stop in for a visit.
One spectacle that no snowmobiler should miss is a camp’s ice-harvest. Many of the camps such as Libby’s on Millinocket Lake, the Chesuncook Lake House or Bald Mountain Camps on Mooselukmeguntik Lake have a designated “ice harvest” day where they cut ice from the lake to put into storage in their ice house for use throughout the rest of the year. These events are a rare look back into the days of yesteryear, before modern refrigeration, when ice harvesting was a huge industry in New England and people needed ice to keep their food fresh. The ice is cut either by chainsaw or long hand-held ice saws, then pulled from the lake with tongs and hauled by snowmobile back to the ice house. An annual ice harvest is a “must-see”. Bald Mountain Camps also hosts an annual winter “Fly In” where airplane owners from all over fly into the camps and join with snowmobilers for a day of food and fun out on the lake. Seeing this many small planes, snowmobiles and outdoor enthusiasts in one place is a spectacle on the lake that shouldn’t be missed.

The next time you are out on the trails up north, plan to stop in and visit one of the Sporting Camps that are open for snowmobilers, and experience the hospitality and the history of the century-old sporting camp tradition.