By SKIP SCHULZ

Daily Mining Gazette

A few years ago, an international snowmobile magazine rated the Keweenaw as being one of the Top 2 destinations to snowmobile throughout North America. However, it is critical that snowmobilers stay on the trails or if they are going to go off-trail riding, know where they can legally ride.

Just because there is a trail, that doesn’t mean that the property the trail is on, is open to off-trail riding. Many trails are on private property where the snowmobile club has worked hard to get a trail easement.

It continues to take a lot of work to get the private property easements on trails that were damaged during the 2018 Father’s Day flood.

A decade ago, the issue of who owns abandoned rail grades from Chassell to Houghton demonstrated the impacts of trail loss.

Recently the Mid America Snow and Terrain Expert Racers (MASTERS) hoped to hold a snowmobile hillclimb on private property near Copper Harbor. The landowner turned the MASTERS down due to snowmobilers riding all over his property.

Then you have snowmobilers that think all Commercial Forest Reserve (CFR) Property is open to snowmobiling.

Peter Wright of the Law Division of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources stated at a Western Upper Peninsula Citizens Advisory Council meeting: “CFR land is NOT open to snowmobiles unless it is to retrieve a deer… (or) has permission from the landowner.”

That means the snowmobiler directly approached the landowner, including those that hold thousands of acres. Just because one sees snowmobile tracks on CFR land, or any land, does not mean it is open to off-trail riding.

One can ride legally off- and on-trail on DNR-managed, publicly owned, state forest.

The Forestry Division of the DNR works with the Parks and Recreation Division when it comes to trails through the hundreds of thousands of state forest acres in the Upper Peninsula. “Parks and Recreation reviews what we (Forestry Division) do to help the trails out there as well. If a snowmobile trail runs through there we do the best we can to not log out there in the winter to impact the snowmobile trail,” explained Tom Seablom, Western UP Forestry supervisor for Michigan DNR.

“If we do have a harvest next to a trail, no matter what time of the year it is, we make sure that all the slash and stumps are removed or cut low within that groomer’s path. We don’t want the grooming equipment to be damaged when they are out there.”

Many snowmobilers will buy a map that depicts ownership of land and where state forest land is. They then will find forest roads to off-trail on. They can also pick up a Designated Motorized Vehicle Use map from the Ottawa National Forest to find which forest roads are open to snowmobilers. Those looking to ride off-trail can also look for land owned by the county.

Publicly owned forests have areas open for off-trail riding. However, it is the responsibility of the snowmobiler to know where they can ride off-trail.

One would think that proper forest management and working with all the different trail use groups would be difficult. To which, Seablom responds, “It can be difficult to manage especially when we’re restricted seasonally in certain areas where we simply cannot log in because of some of the other impacts. That’s where a multi-resource agency knows that it’s not 100% of the time, sometimes it’s 25% of the time where we have to work with the other groups to make sure that we’re not going to impact on that segment of the resource.”

Seablom states that DNR has come a long way in his 17 years of working with snowmobilers resulting in a strong and healthy renewable natural resource.

While the DNR is working with snowmobilers, it comes down to those user groups respecting the forests and the private landowners that provide the trail easements. When snowmobilers go off the marked trails or even the state forest roads, they put that trail easement at risk.

To know what land is public and what land is private, one can get a plat book. Know where you can legally ride.