Monday, March 8, 2004

Wintry Blast -Snowmobilers race back to where it began-

Beausejour – Snowmobile fans drove up to hundreds of kilometers to the cradle of snowmobile racing for the joy of sitting outdoors all weekend in a Manitoba winter.

"Everybody in the racing community knows Beausejour – it’s been here forever," three-time World Snowmobiling Champion David Wahl of Greenbush, Minn., said yesterday over the roar of revving engines in the pit area.

The racers travel from Minnesota to Quebec each week, Wahl said, but every racer puts Beausejour on the calendar: "This is pretty much a premiere one here. It’s like a 10."

Dustin Wahl and his Polaris lead a Ski-Doo in a delicate dance through the corner at Beausejour.

The Canadian Power Tobboggan Championships held yesterday and Saturday brought an end to the North American racing-circuit season, a circuit that began back in December in Beausejour.

The races began here 42 years ago with a couple dozen snowmobilers, said 75-year-old local former racer Clarence Baker. This year, 4,000 people came out to watch 107 drivers accompanied by four-member pit crew and enormous trailers of machines and equipment.

Organizers say it’s a tremendous community effort pulling together dozens of volunteers each year. They’ve built a 1,200-seat grandstand around a kilometer long racing track that has ice about 40 cm thick the length of the course. Local farmers donate flax for the safety barriers that line the course.

Wahl said snowmobile-racing dates back to pretty much the same way that car races got started –"the day they built the second one."

Baker said the Lions Club had the idea 42 years ago to run some races in Beaujesour. There was a snowmobile factory north of town then, and people figured having races was natural. "The races were held in conjunction with Winter Farwell (festival), trying to get rid of winter at the end of February," he laughed.

About two-dozen local snowmobilers entered. "A couple might have made adjustments, trying to get a little more speed. A hot snowmobile was 30 miles per hour (48 km/h)," Baker said. Yesterday’s racers could hit 160 km/h in the straightaway.

If there’s any community that can claim a tradition, it’s us," Baker said. "I’ve had a happy association with the snowmobile industry – it’s really shortened the winter for us."

New York
Tom Garbolinski, president of the organizing committee, said snowmobilers and fans come from as far away as Alberta, New York State, Quebec and Washington State.

The crews and fans have filled every hotel room within 40 kilometers of Beaujesour, Garbolinski said. The racers arrived last Wednesday and don’t leave until today.

Bob Krawchuk was proudly displaying some antique snow machines dating back to the early ‘60s. His grandfather, Mike Bosak, was a pioneer in snowmobile design and manufacturing north of Beaujesour in the late 1940s, he said. Krawchuk is president of the Canadian Historical Snowmobile Museum, which has about 30 antique machines and lots of plans – but now needs money for a building, preferably in Beaujesour.

We bring out this old stuff, let people see them, hear them, smell them," said Krawchuk. Those early machines were designed to pull sleds carrying close to 600 kilograms, and to be workhorses for trappers, fishers, and parks staff, he said, adding it was the ‘60s before snowmobiles became pleasure machines.

Reprinted by permission from the Winnepeg Free Press.