Warden Spahr of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and the camera crew from North Woods Law were there to see the start of a new trail that will link the Ossipee Mountain ATVERS with the Limington trails to the north. We worked together with the Warden's Service, a state biologist and other ATV, and snowmobile groups to begin cutting in the new trail. The Army is going to be using their base for training so our trail will now be outside the base. I felt like a protected Moose with the wardens there.
Mahindra tractor was helpful to say the least. Also gave its operator a nice seat for lunch.

My trusty steed with the Bush Buggy trailer filled with chainsaws, gas, oil, brush cutter and more.

About half the group that worked on the trail. The group I worked with did a 12' wide, 4/10ths of a mile clearing through the woods. Not sure how far the group working south made it.

 

Warden Spahr and the camera crew from Animal Planet's North Wood's Law. Warden Spahr even borrowed one of my chainsaws for a picture.

 

Either Maine or the US government will not pay for the Maine National Guard troops to train out of state anymore. So, they are using this old Army base for training, including short strip landings by C130's. They smoothed out the old airstrip and will be putting in those metal plates that link together to form the tarmac. Cost the Army about $40K to smooth it out. Just before lunch one of the wardens was on his Polaris Sportsman with a cameraman sitting on the back rack, filming over his shoulder. Guy comes on the base (Was posted: No unauthorized vehicles allowed. We were given permission to stage our work parties from the base.) and begins doing donuts in his Dodge Ram pickup right in front of the warden. Guess he didn't see the uniform or something. He has at least a $200 fine and possibly having to pay for whatever damages he did to the airstrip.

 

Looks like you guys had a good time and got some work done.

I gotta ask,

Was that mahindra tractor state purchased? Would be a shame if your tax money was responsible for buying it

 

The tractor is owned by the guy sitting in the bucket. Can't remember his name. He really likes it. Said he's done quite a bit of stuff between the bucket and the Higgins??? rake. He said the Ossipee Mt. ATVers have a bigger tractor with a backhoe but the trail is in early stages right now. It was quite a tiring day for everybody. We made it to about 2 pm after starting around 8 am.

 

that's awesome - any new trail is always welcome

 

It was neat to see the various groups working together for a common goal of keeping the various trail systems connected. It's only a faint dream here in Massachusetts. They hate us here.

 

I'm always glad to see people working together to build more trails no matter where it is. Our ATV stickers that we need to ride went up from $16.25 to $36.25 a year so they should be maintaining the trails or possibly opening up more. They've already connected some of the trails together and I'm hoping for more. Some of the trails are connected by motorcycle only trails that could possibly be widened out.

 

Maine and Northern New Hampshire are really going for it. Every time I get a new Maine map of trails there are more and more miles to ride. In the past few years NH jumped on the bandwagon to the point you can ride from the western border to the eastern border in Northern NH. They are connected now with one Maine club but that club isn't connected to the next one yet. The next club to the east is connected to most of Western and Northern Maine.