News

Idea for new smowmobling club starts taking shape

By Matthew Semisch

11/18/2014

At the Bottineau Armory on Wednesday night, wheels began turning on the potential formation of a new family snowmobiling club in the city.

The Peace Garden Trail Association (PGTA) held an open-floor public meeting to discuss the possibility of forming a new snowmobiling club for Bottineau. David Vad, the vice president and trail coordinator for the association, led the meeting.

Vad had concerns about attendance due to the Economic Development Corporation meeting going on at the same time Wednesday night at the Cobblestone Inn. However, 25 interested riders showed up before the PGTA meeting started at 7 p.m., and several others also filtered in as the hour-long meeting progressed.

Most of the riders are from Bottineau. Nine from Belcourt also attended the meeting, though, as did four more from Rolla.
The PGTA is already home to two clubs. The Roaring 20’s is a club largely made up of riders from Lake Metigoshe, and the Rock Lake-based Seldom Seen Snowmobiling Club is also part of the association.

What Vad proposed, however, was the formation of a new family snowmobiling club made up primarily of riders from Bottineau proper. He used the meeting to gauge public interest, and he came away pleased with what transpired.

Plans for the new club are still in the early stages, but Vad feels that the groundwork for a third PGTA club is already at least somewhat in place. He hopes that a former club that was once sanctioned by Snowmobiling North Dakota can be resurrected under a new Bottineau banner.

“We want to start another family snowmobile club in Bottineau, and I think this meeting showed that there’s an appetite for one,” Vad said. “Many years ago, there was the Lake Metigoshe Family Snowmobiling Club made of people that went up to the lake during the winter and snowmobiled and formed a club. 

“Now that they’re not sanctioned, I don’t know if we’ll keep that name or use the structure from it and have a new name that better represents Bottineau like Bottineau Snowmobiling Club or something like that.”

The Peace Garden Trail snakes through the Turtle Mountains and runs for 177 miles in all. Bottineau, Dunseith, Lake Metigoshe, Rock Lake, Rolla, Souris and St. John all have land on the trail.

The trail, over which the PGTA took operations in 1996, runs through the International Peace Garden near Dunseith and Lake Metigoshe State Park. It connects with the Canadian snowmobiling trail system at the International Peace Garden and also at Carbury Port.

Another talking point Vad brought up at the meeting was the PGTA’s demographics. Many of the association’s members are either retired or are approaching retirement age, and many who have considered themselves snowmobiling enthusiasts in the past head south in the winter.

Vad hopes that the formation of a new family club would help to attract younger members.

“Our club is made up largely of a lot of retirees or folks who are retiring,” he said. “The last seven or eight members we had that we lost left the club because they retired and sold their snowmobiles and then they go south at Thanksgiving to escape the winter. 

“They’re getting older and don’t ride as much, but we still have members who are still around here and love it, but we have so many members that have been around for so many years that we’re looking for younger members so that we can pass the traditions of the club on and keep it going.

“We’re trying to promote snowmobiling in this area and keep people enthused about it,” Vad continued. “Instead of going south to Phoenix or Florida or wherever, we want to keep people interested, keep them here, get new members in and keep what we have going strong locally.”

Going forward, the plan is to keep the ball rolling on the formation of the new club and to get it sanctioned by Snowmobiling North Dakota ahead of the organization’s 2015 convention.

“My plan, now that we know enough people are interested in this, is to have a meeting every month. Basically, once a month every month from December through to March,” Vad said. 

“By the end of March, hopefully we’ll have something in writing and set in stone so that we can attend the Snowmobiling North Dakota convention next year and just keep this whole thing going.”