Volunteers help maintain 300 miles of CO snow trails
Roger Pennington, grooming foreman for the San Juan Sledders Snowmobile Club, works the Vallecito Nordic Track near Durango on Jan. 27. Shaun Stanley, The Durango Herald/AP Photo
By Emery Cowan, The Durango Herald
DURANGO — The stories came tumbling out of Roger Pennington's lips, each tale leading seamlessly into the next.
Fueled by Mountain Dew and peanut M&Ms, the 56-year-old lifelong snowmobiler spun through tales of overnight rescue missions, a last-minute assignment to groom trails for a dogsled race and several 17-hour trips across the peaks of the San Juan Mountains as he drove a 10,000-pound grooming machine along the Nordic trails at the banks of Vallecito.
The San Juan Sledders Snowmobile Club member, a recently retired port-of-entry officer with the state, spent almost 300 hours last year grooming trails.
Pennington's stories are snapshots of his years of experience as one of the most active members of the San Juan Sledders, the area's snowmobile club. It's one of about 26 in the state that are supported by registration fees all snowmobilers are required to pay. The clubs' most important function is to groom trails around the area.
The state funds $660,000 worth of contracts to groom upwards of 2,600 miles of trails, said Tom Metsa, the motorized program trail manager for the state trails program. All the money comes from registration fees.
The San Juan Sledders, which began in 1992, grooms more than 300 miles of trails from nine trailheads between west Mancos and Purgatory and Missionary Ridge. State money helps pay for diesel and maintenance costs, but all the groomers volunteer their time.
Only about eight of the San Juan Sledders' 100-plus members can operate the club's groomer.
Pennington does the most grooming by far - about 75 percent of all the work, said Marty Gunn, the club's president.
Most of the volunteers fit the grooming expeditions around their jobs, often going out at dusk and returning in the early hours of the next morning. Pennington's longest grooming stint was 36 hours. Nighttime hours are OK, he says, because the snow is harder and the groomers are less likely to run into other people on the trail.
Conflicts between snowmobilers and non-motorized users - cross-country skiers, hikers, snowshoers, mushers - are a reality, he said, but they shouldn't be.
"We're all recreating in the forest," he said. "We all need that release from the stress of the week."
In addition to using its marchine for grooming, the club plays a part in some rescues. Pennington remembers being called out once when the snow reached the windshield.
The public-service element of the club is one reason that drives him to continue volunteering, Pennington said. Grooming also helps build a sense of goodwill between motorized and non-motorized trail users. And he likes to see people having fun, he said.
For Gunn, the club's president, the draw is the experience of grooming.
"We see some things that nobody else ever sees," he said. "You just see some snowscapes when it's two in the morning and you're 20 miles from the truck on a clear night."
"It's not for everybody, but there's some of us out there that enjoy it," he said.
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