Since the snows of late autumn melted away, it had been a lackluster season for area snowmobilers from mid-December until late January.

That all changed with the Jan. 27 blizzard, and the snowstorms that followed in the last week. February holds great promise for people who ride the trails on their sleds.

For the members of the Tri-Town Penguins Snowmobile Club, the blizzard posed more of a challenge than your run-of-the-mill snowstorm. When snowfall amounts reach the levels they did on Jan. 27, groomers can’t just go in with a dragger.

“I have to roll it first, then go behind and drag,” said club member Dick Dyer, who lives on Sweetser Road in Pownal. “I normally roll once or twice a year, for big storms.”

For two days, Dyer couldn’t get his Chevrolet Blazer, which he uses to haul the roller and the dragger, out of his yard. Dyer tried using a smaller roller behind his snowmobile along the power lines near the Central Maine Power Co. Surowiec Substation on Thursday, but got stuck after rolling the trail for three miles. Following Friday’s storm, Dyer and Duncan Daly, club president, planned to work together on Saturday to roll and then groom the trail behind the Blazer.

“That snow will settle the other stuff,” Daly said Friday. “We’ll be out there for four or five hours on Saturday.”

Not that Dyer, nor anyone else who uses the Tri-Town Penguins snowmobile trails, minds the extra effort.

“Rides have been pretty scarce the last few weeks,” Daly said. “This is going to change things for the good.”

He said that the club is well equipped to deal with the avalanche of snow.

“Fortunately, of the five guys who do the grooming, some of them are retired, and another has plenty of time,” he said. “With so much snow, they can’t smooth the trails out until they’re packed a little bit. It’s like packing them down with snowshoes.”

The snowmobile club manages trails that wind throughout the three towns of Durham, Freeport and Pownal. One runs south along Route 125 in Freeport to Ledgewood Lane, crosses Route 36 and goes from there to Beech Hill and finally to the Pownal Road, near Freeport Village Campground. In North Freeport, another club trail crosses Route 136 just north of Penny Lane and comes out near Bell Farms in Durham, then turns toward Pownal Center. Another trail starts on Sweetser Road in Pownal and ends at the North Freeport Store. A trail that begins on Pot Ash Road in Pownal (which is known as Poland Range Road in Durham) goes to Davis Road in Durham, to North Freeport, to Merrill Road in Pownal and, again, to the Freeport Village Campground.

Daly said that the dry snow from Jan. 27 posed another challenge.

“It doesn’t pack well,” he said. “It needs a little bit of moisture in the snow to pack it down and groom it good.”

The cold that produces dry snow does have an advantage for people maintaining snowmobile trails, however. It ices up the small streams.

Dyer figures it would take about eight hours to pack and then groom the trail he does with the club’s largest piece of equipment. Dyer hauls the roller and then the big drag behind the truck.

“I basically do the power line,” Dyer said. “I go about three miles to the west, then I go east to Stackpole Road, which is about eight miles, and then I turn around into the woods, toward Runaround Pond.”

Dyer said he normally would groom all the way to Route 9, but a bridge is out. It’s one of several that the snowmobile club builds and maintains so riders can cross brooks and streams.

Bernie Coombs of Brunswick, the snowmobile club trail master, said that the big dragger that Dyer operates is used to groom along all the power lines.

“Richard does most of the grooming,” Coombs said. “Drifts are a problem. With this much, it’s really too much.”

The Tri-Town Penguins Snowmobile Club has around 30 members. Once a year, they drive 500 miles round trip to Daly’s camp in Washington County, and ride for 200 miles or so on the trails there.

Dick Dyer, in his Chevy Blazer, grooms a snowmobile trail in Pownal last weekend for the Tri-Town Penguins Snowmobile Club. Courtesy photo