2011 KLIM and GORE-TEX Snowmobile Grant Winners announced

KLIM Technical Riding Gear and GORE-TEX® are proud to announce the winners of the 2011-2012 Snowmobile Grants. The KLIM and GORE-TEX® snowmobile grants are awarded to five clubs, organizations or groups who promote the core ideals of responsible snowmobiling and who best represent and support the pinnacles of a true enthusiast group: Snowmobiling Family, Community and the sport’s Preservation.

This year, we are proud to announce the following clubs have been awarded $1,000 each for their efforts.

The winners are:
Central Oregon Snowbusters, Bend, Oregon
Matt Mahoney, President of the Snowbusters, wrote in with some great focus and direction for the club. We were impressed with their story and forward-thinking efforts. The Snowbusters is Oregon’s youngest snowmobile club and were actually started because of the fall of one of the state’s oldest. After the old club became unsanctioned and stopped grooming trails, the Snowbusters stepped up, big time, and started organizing. They now groom more miles and more hours than any other club in the state. On top of grooming, they are excited and focused on the expansion of their young club (Mahoney is only 29, after all) with tomorrow’s sledders. It is their mission to get the next-generation, the “young blood” of riding involved in club efforts. How do you do that? Hold group rides one weekend a month this winter split into four groups to focus on a specific group of riders. This year, club rides for Extreme Mountain, Ladies, Family Trail and High Performance Trail groups will get their own focused attention. Add in their re-introduction to racing events in the area, cooperation with different winter-use groups and positive media exposure for the snowmobiling community and the Snowbusters are quickly becoming a model club for the young guns in the country.

San Juan Sledders and Silverton Snowmobile Clubs (combined), Colorado
A long list of efforts and local community involvement made this application stand out--including a Fun Ride for Handicapped members of their communities, Big Brothers/Big Sisters ride, cooperative grooming practices with dog sledders, Nordic ski clubs and local municipalities, snowmobile safety classes (taught by their own grooming foreman), search and rescue assistance and just putting in a ton of effort to make sure snowmobiling is successful in the Durango/Silverton, Colorado areas. Check out the video of their Fun Ride.

McHenry Sno-Birds Snowmobile Club, McHenry, Illinois
The McHenry Sno-Birds’ is the longest standing snowmobile club in McHenry County, fist starting in 1967. In fact, their current club President, Mr. Albert Adams was one of the founding members of the club and is 81 years old! Their reasoning for forming a club back in 1967? The same as it is today: to promote snowmobiling—simple! With their $1,000 grant, the Sno-Birds look to purchase new trail marking stakes and signs, purchase split wood to heat the only grant-funded warming shelter in the county, buy advertising in the county wide daily newspaper promoting safe snowmobiling and fund the McHenry County Snowmobile Association’s account to offset any landowner damage claims.

Frozen Few Snowmobile Club, Coggon, Iowa
Besides having a spectacular club name, the Frozen Few presented a great list of outreach and snowmobile-promoting goals for the 2011-2012 season. They’re starting off by tripling their number of local Snocross events they host in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at Hawkeye Downs Speedway. The 1,000-plus fans in attendance at each round will be introduced to the sport and club brilliantly. Through this exposure, more riders can attend the state Safety Training Program the club puts on (required to all riders in Iowa age 12-17 and chow down on free lunch. On top of these ambitions plans the Frozen Few plan on grooming 275+ miles of trails in Iowa, providing Trail Maps, arranging landowner access and organizing multiple club events.

McKean SnowRiders, McKean, Pennsylvania
The McKean SnowRiders represents Erie County in Northwestern Pennsylvania. While their 200-member club might not have the largest membership in the country, their county certainly doesn’t have a shortage of snowmobiles. Erie County has over 2,000 sleds registered—more than any other PA county! With all that traffic, their trail system definitely acts as a hub of riding and links 162 miles of the Erie Crawford Snowmobile Alliance trails. Obviously the club sees a lot of riders passing through, and a lot of them are from out of state or non-local. In order to make sure every rider understands the importance of staying on the trail—nearly all of it is on private landowner property, after all—the SnowRiders plan on purchasing all the required signs, posts and literature to step up the safety level of their system.

KLIM and GORE-TEX® would like to express our sincere appreciation to everyone who applied, all applicants were truly worthy of the KLIM and GORE-TEX® grant awards and we deeply appreciate their dedication the roots of our most-loved sport.