Get ready for one heck of a ride — or actually two kinds of snowmobile rides.
The 11th annual Vintage Snowmobile Ride/Trail Breakers Trail Ride — Fun Day will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 4, on the property of Archie Lake at 33597 Wadena County Road 23 in Menahga.
“Archie Lake’s my father-in-law and he's in his mid-80s,” said Steve Lindroos, an organizer of the outdoor recreational event. “He was one of the first members of the Trail Breakers.”
The Wadena County Trail Breakers is a snowmobile club that was founded between 1967-68 with trails between Menahga and Huntersville, according to the organization’s website.
Participants in the Vintage Snowmobile Ride will leave Lake’s property at noon. All age sleds and any age snowmobile riders are welcome to join in the free event on local groomed trails.
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“The Trail Breakers have been having a Fun Day and in the past, it's been at places like Huntersville and different locations,” Lindroos said. “And this year, they wanted to combine the two and have the Trail Breakers Fun Day and the Archie Lake Vintage Ride at one time.”
Back when the Trail Breakers began, the trails were groomed with an Alpine Ski-Doo pulling a coil bed spring, according to the club’s website.
“He's been riding old snowmobiles since the ‘60s and he still rides them to this day,” Lindroos said of his father-in-law.
The snowmobile club now has more than 200 miles of groomed trails and even two corridor trails: one from Little Falls and going through Nevis and another from Alexandria and going through Park Rapids.
“Usually, on our Vintage (Snowmobile) Ride, it's intended for sleds 25 years or older, and the Trail Breakers. Fun Day is for any sled, so if you got a 2015 snowmobile, you could come out,” Lindroos explained.
The Trail Breakers will hold its snowmobile club ride in conjunction with the Vintage Snowmobile Ride. The only difference is the length and time involved with the rides.
“The vintage sled from the ‘70s, some from the ‘80s, they're gonna go on a shorter ride, about a 9-mile ride,” Lindroos said. “And then the newer sleds will take off and they'll head out through the Huntersville Forest on a separate ride.”
Participants of both rides are welcome to reunite with other snowmobilers at the starting location in Menahga in Wadena County for a bonfire and free hot dogs and chips, and hot cocoa and marshmallows, which will be provided by the Trail Breakers.
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“We've got plenty of parking plowed out there for snowmobile trailers,” he said. “We got a little island on a small lake … and that's where we'll have the bonfire and the get-together. And that's where we leave from to go on the vintage ride and the longer ride for the newer sleds.”
The Trail Breakers snowmobile club celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018. The club started at the Huntersville Forest Campsite. It started out as the Sebeka Trailbreakers Snowmobile Club.
“There's a bunch of guys that just love vintage snowmobiles,” Lindroos said. “And, you know, the beauty of it is some of them are fully restored and are in better-than-showroom condition. And some of them get drugged out of the barn once a year for this ride.”
Most area towns had snowmobile clubs in the 1960s and '70s when there were more than 100 manufacturers of snowmobiles
“It seems like everyone's so busy these days, no one takes time to get together to roast some hot dogs, have a few laughs together, go on a short snowmobile ride for an afternoon,” Lindroos lamented.
Lindroos said the annual event attracts as many as 50 snowmobile riders in a good year and as little as half of that when the weather is really cold such as 20 degrees below zero. The weather forecasted for Menahga on Saturday calls for mostly cloudy skies and a high of 35 degrees.
“Everyone's welcome,” Lindroos said of Saturday’s free event in Menahga. “The wives come, kids come. I got grandkids that go now on the rides.”
For more information about the Wadena County Trail Breakers’ snowmobile rides and day of fun in Menahga, call 218-539-1139 or visit the club’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/trailbreakersinc .
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