Winter sports are on the comeback trail, says snowmobile group leader
By Mike Lange
Staff Writer
MOOSEHEAD JUNCTION TWP — The lights went out but the show went on.
Dinner was just getting underway at the Moosehead Region Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting Sunday afternoon at Squaw Mountain when the electric power failed.
Observer photo/Mike Lange
MSA OUTLOOK — Bob Myers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association, was the guest speaker at the Moosehead Region Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting on Oct. 26.
Undaunted, the meeting continued minus the scheduled PowerPoint presentation.
The keynote speaker was Bob Myers, the executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association and vice chair of the Maine Tourism Association.
The MSA has 26,000 members and represents 289 snowmobile clubs from Sanford to Allagash. The impact of snow-related recreation on Maine’s economy, Myers said, “is tremendous. Snowmobiling and skiing represent $625 million in economic activity.”
In areas like Greenville, winter sports also have a “trickle-down effect when people come back in the summer. Visitors often say, ‘Gee, I’d like to see what the place looks like with leaves on the trees,’” Myers said.
While the economy has presented some challenges in recent years, Myers said that skiing and snowmobiling “are pretty stable right now. Last winter’s ski areas had 1.3 million skier visits which is about average for the past five years. In these days, flat (numbers) is good. We’re not going backwards.”
Myers noted that the areas that did show growth last season “were community ski areas that were healthy and thriving like Squaw Mountain. People made tremendous efforts to reopen this place and get things going again, and it’s been a tremendous success.”
Snowmobiling also had an excellent year, mostly due to the solid snowpack all through most of the winter, Myers noted.
Statewide snowmobile registrations were approximately 82,000, which was 4 percent over the previous season, he said. However, 10 years ago “when we had this kind of winter, we had 105,000 registrations. We don’t know where these people went. They just stopped snowmobiling.”
But it’s just not a Maine trend, said the MSA official. “New Hampshire has one-third less sleds than they did five years ago and Vermont has half as many,” he said.
On the plus side, Myers said that the annual snowmobile show at the Augusta Civic Center on the weekend of Oct. 18-19 “was the best one in five years. Our attendance was up by 20 percent. People are looking and buying.”
So Myers said he’s optimistic about the future of Maine’s winter sports economy. “You have up years and down years – it’s the same in any industry,” he said. “But when you have the community and clubs working together, great things happen.”
During the annual business meeting, chamber president Liz Cannell announced that interim executive director Angela Arno of Dover-Foxcroft has been hired on a permanent basis. “She comes to the table with an extraordinary set of skills,” Cannell said.
A new chamber website was also unveiled and Everard “Ev” Hayes was elected as the organization’s new president. Hayes is a reserve officer with the Greenville Police Department and he and his wife, Judy, own and operate Northwoods Expressions.