EASTMAN SNOPALS Inc.

View the October 2023 Newsletter here!

View the June 2023 Newsletter here!

Our meeting and AGM will be held:

Date: May 4th, 2023
Place: Pinawa Club – Pinawa MB.
Time: (Optional dinner and fellowship starting at 6:00pm) Meeting at 7:00pm

Our AGM will see nominations for our BOARD and COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON roles

1. President
2. Vice President
3. Treasurer
4. Secretary
5. Maintenance Director
6. Grooming Director
7. Director at Large (up to 3)

Committee Chairperson Roles

1. Raffle Coordinator
2. Winners Choice Raffle Coordinator
3. Club Ride Coordinator
4. Pubic Relations Coordinator
5. Club Event Coordinator

DIRECTORS – PLEASE ADVISE BY RETURN EMAIL

• if you are wishing to accept nomination to continue in your current role
• if you would like to seek another position on our board

TRAIL GUARDIAN & SHELTER HOSTS – please confirm by return email

• if you plan to continue in your role next season
• if you would like to accept a nomination for another role on our BOARD

GENERAL MEMBERSHIP – please advise by return email

• if you would like to let your name stand for any of our BOARD positions
• if you would like to volunteer or any of our COMMITTEE roles

Hope to see you on May 4th
John Fleming

President
Eastman SnoPals Inc
Box 1167
Lac du Bonnet, Mb R0E 1A0
(204) 451-0481
https://eastmansnopals.ca

View the April 2023 Newsletter here!

Recreational snowmobiling is an exciting sport in Eastern Manitoba and provides for significant economic spin off to area businesses.  Our region boasts some of the most picturesque scenery in southern Manitoba.

The Eastman SnoPals groom 328 km of trails between our neighboring clubs in the Eastern Region.

*Brokenhead Trail Blazers to the south west

*Mooswa Lake Snowriders to the west

*Lee River Snow Riders to the north east

*Reynolds Snow Riders to the south

*Whiteshell Snowmobile club to the east

Our trail system taken you through a variety of landscapes from flat prairie fields into the Agassiz Forest and on to the Canadian Shield with its beautiful granite outcroppings.  Along our trail system we boast several of the most photographed sites, the view from the generating station at Seven Sisters, the Pinawa Channel diversion dam and the Old Pinawa Provincial Park sites all of which can be found on our trail 768.  Perhaps one of the reasons this trail can see over 1000 sleds pass by on a weekend.

Our club maintains 5 shelters along the trail system for riders to stop, warmup around the stove or cook up some sausage over the open fire.

There are many staging areas to park your trucks and trailers near our trails to unload and hit the trails.  We see thousands of snowmobiles each week when Mother Nature provides the necessary snow upon which to groom a trail and the impact this injection of riders at the restaurants and gas stations is significant.

This season has been a difficult season with Mother Nature giving us a flood in the summer and record precipitation in the fall.  Then she decided to make a winter with mild temperatures that took a very long time to build the ice base necessary to groom across the swamps, over the creeks and the rivers.  This delayed the opening of many sections of our trails in some cases by more than a month.

We could talk about the challenges of brushing, packing, signing and grooming 328 km of trails as it is a large task BUT as I think about those tasks, I see the strong back bone of the Eastman SnoPals.  That backbone is our central core of volunteers.  Men and women who give their time to our club to accomplish the many tasks necessary to make spectacular snowmobile trails.   Some of these folks do their volunteering after their full time workday while others give their time away from other retirement pleasures and family to build and maintain recreational snowmobiling.

As a wise person once said MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK and that is the case for our club.   We have volunteers who give the club 1 or 2 hours a week and we have volunteers who give in excess of 40-hour volunteer workweeks for the betterment of the Eastman SnoPals.

So often it is the unhappy voices which are the loudest but occasionally we hear the voices of the riders who are very appreciative of the efforts of our club.

And it is those voices that give us the motivation to do it all again.  Day after day.  Week after week and year after year.

That being said this year we were proud of one of our members who was nominated provincially and was selected as GROOMER OPERATOR OF THE YEAR by SnoMAN.  Dave Bruderer of Pinawa developed his snowmobile club skills in Gillam before he retired and moved to Pinawa.  Dave is currently our GROOMING DIRECTOR who oversees all of our grooming operations.  Dave is one of our senior operators and spends time training and developing our new operators.  When not scheduling our grooming, he can be found packing trails, cutting bush, splitting and stacking fire wood for the shelters or doing maintenance on our equipment.

There is really not enough paper to list all that Dave does for our club and we are all thankful for his dedication and leadership.

Now is the time to say THANK YOU Dave!!

Hopefully your role model of volunteerism which encourage other riders to join a club and once in the club they may help keep the club strong by being part of the team of people who go out every day to make recreational snowmobiling the best it can be.

See you on the trails.

Eastman SnoPals – Welcome to our World

The Eastman SnoPals are now hosting a 50/50 draw licenced by the RM of Whitemouth at the Tourist Hotel in Seven Sisters on Friday nights in the beverage room.

On Friday October 19th, the first night of the draw, $360 in tickets were sold and the payout was $180.

The lucky winner was Jason Labady of Seven Sisters