Last year, there were only ten days we had to shovel snow. Out of 365 days. So you can kind of understand why the North Liberty city council is recommending eliminating its snowmobile trails.
Eastern Iowa isn’t like Buffalo, where it snows 61 days out of the year or even Cleveland with 47 days a year. Binghamton, N.Y. got 90.4 inches of snow last winter. Caribou, Maine, the snowiest city in America, received a show-stopping 114.2 inches and Flagstaff, Ariz. (yes, it snows in Ariz.) got 95.7 inches of the white stuff. A mere 18 inches of snow fell on North Liberty. Total.
Still, the prospect of getting rid of North Liberty’s snowmobile trails got the cold shoulder from a lot of local snowmobilers. And, it turns out, there are a lot of them. According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, there are 3,500 registered snowmobiles in Johnson County — 21,000 in all of Iowa. Prices for a new machine run $10,000 to $20,000 –with used ones starting at around $2,000. Enclosed snowmobile trailers cost about $10,000. Add $180 a year for snowmobile insurance and you begin to see why — when it does snow— these folks are not going to curl up in their La-Z-Boy with a cup of hot chocolate and a John Grisham novel. They want to churn through deep snow drifts at 40 miles an hour, the arctic windchill tearing at faces, air bourn as they leap from ditches, the engine screaming in their frosty pink ears. This is their idea of serious fun.
In Kodiak, Alaska, the city council doesn’t dither over designated snowmobile trails. The whole town is a snowmobile trail; if you want to get anywhere in Kodiak, you’d better have snowmobile … or good snowshoes. Although Iowa has more than 9,000 miles of snowmobile trails, they are rarely covered in snow and it’s not as if a snowmobile is essential for survival in Iowa. Still, I can understand the urgency to take advantage of every snow, especially if you’ve spent $30,000 on snowmobile stuff.
Most larger towns in Iowa have already done away with their trails, citing dangers to property and public safety. North Liberty had been considering eliminating their trails for years. Then last year, when a snowmobiler slid into an electrical box at a roundabout, causing $20,000 damage, they decided to reexamine their trail policy. (And while they’re at it, they might reexamine why they have a major electrical box on a roundabout. Why don’t they put it someplace less likely to get hit — like on an airplane runway?)
But, for now, North Liberty is holding off on getting rid of their snowmobile trails after lobbying from the Iowa Snowdrifters Club, a non-profit that looks after 200 miles of trails in Linn and Johnson County. Sure, snowmobile trails aren’t vital lifelines to grocery stores and hospitals. But there aren’t many alternatives –if you have your heart set on getting freezing cold while bouncing rapidly over rough snowy terrain and going no place in particular.