Of all the things a snowmobile club has to deal with when maintaining a trail system, fire isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.
Yet let’s face it: when you create almost 300km of trails smack dab in the middle of the Boreal forest, fire is a very real possibility. That possibility became a reality for me and 88,000 friends in May, 2016. Fort McMurray residents went from “Oh look, another fire” on May 1 to literally running for our lives two days later.
To be honest, in the initial first days, the last thing on anyone’s mind was the snowmobile trails. After all, summer was on its way and the next riding season was still far away. As the fire grew and ravaged more and more of the pristine landscape, members of the McMurray Sno-Drifters started to realize that portions of our trail systems were being engulfed in flame along with swathes of our city.