Powassan town councillor Randy Hall says suggestions made at a meeting to discuss a multi-use trail in the community “may not be a permanent solution.” but he believes residents proposed “viable alternatives for an interim trail.”
For the last three years, Hall has been working to re-establish a trail that gets out-of-town snowmobile traffic back into the community.
The original trail ran across several private properties and Hall said “it saw a lot of (snowmobile) traffic run through the community,” which he said was good for the local economy. However, Hall says the local snowmobile club lost access to the trail as a result of a small handful of snowmobilers abusing the privilege while riding over private properties.
“It only takes one (bad) operator to blow the rest of it out of the water,” Hall said.
He adds the club needs to experience the loss of only one small section of a trail to lose everything “because that cuts off access to other parts of the trail.”
Hall says if private landowners no longer “have an appetite to work with the snowmobile club,” it means once again talking to the Ministry of Transportation to see if a way can be worked out where a connecting trail runs parallel to Highway 11 by Powassan.
One suggestion residents at the public meeting brought up was the possibility of riding snowmobiles on the land that runs parallel to Highway 11 on one side of the divided four-lane highway.
A map shows the usable land along this stretch is quite large but Hall says there are portions where the land width gets squeezed down by the surrounding terrain. Hall says it means any potential trail would be very close to the roadway along some sections. Hall estimates the distance from the highway shoulder to a trail could be as little as 20 feet in some spots and he knows of at least two sections where this occurs.
He plans to talk to the Ministry of Transportation to see if it will allow a trail to be developed alongside the highway despite the close proximity it would have to highway traffic in certain areas.
Hall says if this approach fails, consideration has to be given to approaching other homeowners to see if it's once again possible to see a trail run through private land.
Among the suggestions made, Hall's personal preference is to run a trail on either side of Highway 11 at Purdon Line to the south and head north to McCharles Line which is a little more than three kilometres. He says the advantage is at Purdon Line there is a tunnel that passes under the four lanes of Highway 11 meaning snowmobilers never have to cross the highway itself.
Hall doesn't believe it's possible to have a trail in place this year and is hopeful one can be in use by late 2024. The primary use of the trail would be for snowmobiles, but Hall says it's possible to add ATV users and perhaps the trail could accommodate hikers and even horseback riders.
Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the North Bay Nugget. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
