27.   It's now the end of March, and I truly expected the sleds would have long been put away for summer, but I'm glad to report this is not the case for 2011! This past week the East Coast received 15cm of snow on Wednesday, followed by another 25cm Friday! 

26.   Wednesday evening I set about repairing the damaged primary clutch and drive belt on Project Renegade which left me broken down last weekend at Sooley's Cabin. I had an old Primary Clutch in stock (which malfunctioned 2 years ago), so I took it apart and found the rubber cushion drive disc had separated from the metal disk on the outside of the clutch. With nothing to loose I purchased some high strength automotive urethane adhesive and bonded the disc in place being careful to make sure it was aligned correctly. After letting the adhesive cure for a couple days, I installed the clutch along with a new drive belt Saturday afternoon.

25.   Sunday morning French, Bill & I loaded up the sleds and headed to the Goulds where we would make tracks on all this fresh late season snow. French was riding his 2009 Yamaha Nytro XTX, Bill his 2010 Yamaha Nytro X-TXand I Project Renegade. Under sunny skies and snow squalls we headed out and found the damp late season snow was pretty dense. It was soft enough to carve through, but not enough to punch right through the drifts.

Leaving Power's Road, we took a loop around chicken farm road, to Northern Pond road and back via Cochrane Pond Road. We then decided to head over towards Petty Harbour as Bill said there were awesome hills over there, French and I have never been there. We headed East on the farmer's road paralleling the Goulds Bypass Highway and picked up the pole line heading South towards Petty Harbour, it's a pretty straight forward route to follow.

24.   It was definitely an awesome idea to ride to Petty Harbour, the hills were absolutely awesome. I can't believe in all my years of sledding I've never been to this gem hidden right in our own backyard. It's simply beautiful and a hell of a lot of fun.

23.   Dense spring snow provided lots of traction, decent protection from rocks, and it still had some give for carving. We spent hours over there pointing our skis at every hill we could find, there's simply a myriad of places to play.

22.   Some of the climbs certainly had a pucker factor, especially the first few times coming back down from a climb. I had one experience high marking where the snow pack slid out from under me which was hairy for sure!

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12.   Every time we crested a hill there was another stretch of untouched hill behind it, the places to play were seemingly endless!

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2.   After we burned a bunch of gas, we headed back towards the Goulds making a pit stop at Tim Horton's in the Goulds for a coffee. This was accessed from the pole line by crossing Fourth Pond then a couple farmers fields. From here we headed back to the trucks where I topped off my tank from a gas can as my older machine is much less fuel efficient then the 2 Nytro's. We spent another couple hours riding areas closer to home in the Goulds/Northern Pond/Bay Bulls Big Pond area. The only mishap of the day was when I lost a rear shock bolt due to bumps in the trail, but luckily I had a spare in my tool kit.

1.   French was also pleased to roll over 4000km on his 2009 Nytro X-TX.  All in all it was an awesome day, a lot of the crew were pissed they missed out, but there's always another weekend. Regardless this last trip marked 2011 the very best season of East Coast snowmobiling to date for the entire crew.

Cheers, MIKE

Copyright © 2025 Michael Smith