New Grooming Education Materials Available

Two new grooming education resources were recently developed by the American Council of Snowmobile Associations (ACSA) and Trails Work Consulting to help grooming managers and groomer operators be more adaptive to changing snowmobile trail grooming needs. According to Trails Work Consulting’s owner Kim Raap, “Snowmobile trail grooming helps provide an improved level of access for snowmobile riders. But if done poorly or inconsistently, it can create safety issues. We look for these new materials to help grooming managers and individual groomer operators provide the right level of service and also hopefully become more efficient and effective.” The new resources are available at www.snowmobileinfo.org/snowmobiling-access-resources.aspx and include:

Top Tips for Effective Trail Grooming—this downloadable Power Point program is intended to help facilitate groomer operator training at the local level by clubs, associations, and trail managing agencies. It outlines numerous top grooming tips developed by Trails Work Consulting and includes illustrative photos, video clips, and detailed presenter notes designed to accommodate a 1½ to 2 hour long training session. It can also be used for individual on-line education.

Best Management Practices for Adaptive Trail Grooming—these best management practices (BMPs) for grooming managers were developed by Trails Work Consulting based upon over 35 years of experience with snowmobile trail grooming management. They stress the need to be adaptive to many variables involved with trail grooming, as well to the many changes which have effected trail grooming management over the past couple of decades. The BMPs focus on overall trail grooming objectives, fleet management principles for grooming programs, the importance of off-season storage and maintenance, managing grooming operations, and controlling the most common wasteful grooming practices.

In discussing the new materials Raap stated, “We developed the very comprehensive Guidelines for Snowmobile Operator Training for the International Association of Snowmobile Administrators (IASA) and ACSA back in 2005. While those groomer training materials have been extremely popular, widely used, and are still pertinent, it’s a huge program with very detailed content that sometimes makes its local use a bit overwhelming. Top Tips is intended to provide a more generalized overview of the most common grooming issues I’ve identified over the past ten years while personally delivering local training programs across the U.S. and Canada. We expect this new program, as well as the Best Management Practices, to be extremely useful additions to the groomer training and management toolbox.”

Funding for these resources was provided by the Recreational Trails Program (RTP) administered by the U.S. Department of Transportation – Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). RTP funds are derived from the federal fuel tax paid on gasoline used in snowmobiles and other motorized recreational vehicles operated on trails and in other off-road, non-highway settings. A cooperative agreement between the ACSA and FHWA works to enhance snowmobile trail safety and access education with RTP funds.

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