When reading some or your messages, I can see how difficult it may be to ride in the States.
The quality of trails varies a lot from one state to another, and you have a lot of fees
everywhere you want to go.

In the province of Quebec, every ATV clubs are regrouped with a provincial federation.
This meens that we only have to pay a subscription to any ATV club of Quebec once a year.
It cost us 100$ CAN (roughly 60$ US) and it allows us to ride EVERYWHERE in Quebec,
in any ATV club for one entire year (oct thru sep), as many times as we want !!!

The yearly pass gives us access to 11,000 miles of trails: 6000 miles of maintained winter trails, 5000 miles of summer trails. Winter trails are mostly located in the southern part
of the province while summer trails are mostly located north of the St-Lawrence river.
In northern Quebec, you could ride for weeks, covering thousands of miles without ever going
in the same trail twice. These are mainly logging roads or ski-doo trails.

If you are interested, check out the maps for trails www.quadnet2.com or Quebec's ATV forum http://www.qvnav.de/qvnq/frm. It is in french but most users are bilingual. If you come to visit us, you can buy a daily or
yearly pass in any ATV store of the province of Quebec.

See you in the trails ...

 

Sounds like you guys got it together up there when it comes to atv's. Things in the states are getting good, but could definitly use some improvement.

 

JackRabbit,

Admire the obvious cooperation BETWEEN the groups(hello, MI. riders) and was wondering what role the Canadian govt. plays in this system? By the way, we have only ONE pay to play area (of any size) in Mi.; mainly for Detroit area riders. Plenty of God's country to explore. Did you attend the big rally in Quebec that was featured in one of the atv mags? Any comments? Thanks, John

 

Hi Michimaniac!

Yes I did go to the Quebec-USA rally last june. For the saturday ride, there was approximatly 900 ATVs (at least 200 of them from the States). For the sunday ride, there was about 400 ATVs. It was a really good run. There are a lot of great rides coming up, particularly during the winter when trails are well groomed which allows us to easily ride 150-200 miles in a day.

As far as organization, don't wait for your government to do anything about it. You may be disappointed! The best way is for local ATV clubs to regroup, connect, standardize the signalisation and only have one yearly fee.

 

JackRabbit,

Your rally sounds like a blast; beautiful country I'm sure. You guys must use hand warmers and windshields as std. equip. on a 200 mi. ride in the dead of winter! Do the snowmobilers complain about you rutting up the trails or are you all one big happy family? Really wish we could bring all our off road groups together as their doesn't seem to be enough people that are willing to support our clubs as compared with units being used(hate to admit it, but haven't given up yet!). Do you folks market your organization in any unusual ways or strategize to keep the members you have? Always looking for new ideas and am curious how many members (on average) sign up every year? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

John

 

In Quebec, there are 126 local ATV clubs, most of them connecting with neighboring clubs. We are using 148 tractors on caterpillars to take care of our trails during winter time with over 2000 volunteers. There are 40,000 members each year. We do not share our trails with the ski-doos, we each have our own set of trails and equipment to take care of them, except for a few places like bridges, etc where there is not enough room for two set of trails.

BTW, are you allowed to cary a passenger on your ATV in the States? This is the main problem our Federation has to resolve with Quebec's government. Because our trails are so beautiful during the winter, 90% of the members practice their sport with a passenger on the back. The government and the ATV manufacturers do not want to allow this, for fear of a court suit. They are supposed to make a decision about that this fall.

If you want to see photos of our trails (summer or winter time), you can see a lot of them on my own web site, in the QUAD (ATV in french) section
www.multimania.com/jackrabbit

 

JackRabbitQc, Riding double? Depends. In Minnesota, you can carry a child passenger with helmet on, providing you are parent or legal guardien(sp) In Wisconsin, I think so but not sure. In anyway, if it looks as if either of you are in danger, Law enforcement will give a ticket. Mom and Pop riding slow and taking pictures, probley no ticket. Two teenagers doing wheelies,,,,yea. Just my own experience.

 

Jackrabbit,

Sorry for the delay; Michigan at least does not allow doubling up,period. Wouldn't bother me if everyone took responsibility for their own stupidity while riding; unfortunately there's an ambulance chaser on every block here in the states. Thanks again for the info on your atv system.

John