The weather tantalized snowmobilers in Northeastern Oregon this fall.

A couple weeks before turkeys were roasted and cream was whipped, snow was piling to prodigious depths.

Sleds, which in many years stay dry until around Christmas, were plying trails closer to Halloween.

“Mother Nature teasing us,” Brandon Christensen of the Tollgate Trail Finders, one of several snowmobile clubs in the region, said on Dec. 11. “A round of storms gets everybody really excited.”

Starting just before Thanksgiving, the generous skies turned stingy.

A persistent ridge of high pressure anchored over Oregon, replacing storms with fog in the basins and sunshine in the mountains.

Much of the early snow stayed, though.

“I’ve been snowmobiling for around 25 years, and I don’t remember a year — there may have been one — when we’ve had the accumulation that we do,” Chris Case, a member of the La Grande Sno-Drifters club, said on Dec. 12. “We’re happy to have the snow this early. I hope it keeps coming.”

A Pacific storm over the weekend, and another tempest that started on Monday, Dec. 16, brought the most snow to the region since Thanksgiving.

Pre-holiday blizzards were more beneficial in certain areas.

The southern and western Wallowas have the deepest snow.

An automated snow-measuring station at Schneider Meadows, north of Halfway, reported record amounts of snow through much of November.

After the lull in the weather from Thanksgiving through the first 10 days of December, the snowpack was lower than in six other years since the station was installed in 1980.

But it was still well above average.

And the pair of storms earlier this week dropped about 2 feet of new snow in that area.

Duane Miles, vice president and grooming chairman for the Panhandle Snowmobile Club in Halfway, said on Dec. 12, before the storms, that the snow was between 7 and 8 feet deep on the measuring pole the club maintains near Fish Lake, north of Halfway. That’s one of the snowiest areas, historically, in Northeastern Oregon.

Some winters the snow never gets deeper, even during the middle of winter, than it is now, Miles said.

Miles said that on a recent day he counted 16 vehicles at the Clear Creek Sno-Park north of Halfway, the starting point for rides to Fish Lake and other areas.

He said local riders, as well as snowmobilers from out of the area, have been taking advantage of the early snow.

Snowmobiling is an economic boon to places such as Halfway, Sumpter, Tollgate and Wallowa County, with riders traveling from outside the region and patronizing motels, restaurants and other businesses.

This year’s early start is especially welcome after the 2023-24 winter, when snow was late to arrive and never was especially bountiful.

“It was terrible,” Miles said.

He said he groomed fewer miles of trails than usual because lower-elevation routes never had enough snow to groom.

Case said members of the La Grande Sno-Drifters club measured about 5 feet of snow in the Bennet Peak area, between Eagle and East Eagle creeks in the southern Wallowas, in early December.

Snow depths were around 3 to 4 feet in the West Eagle Meadows, Boulder Park and Flagstaff Butte areas, Case said.

“It’s good, settled snow,” he said.

The only flaw is an ice layer that formed during a brief thaw in late November, Case said.

The ice layer can make riding conditions “a little crunchy,” he said.

And because snow doesn’t immediately bond to ice, the layer can increase the risk of avalanches, he said.

Although the November storms allowed snowmobilers to ride earlier than usual, clubs hadn’t started grooming trails as of mid-December.

But that’s typical, Christensen said.

Many clubs don’t usually begin grooming until around Christmas or early January.

Christensen said he and his family went riding in the Tollgate area in the second week of December and “had a fun time.”

“The trails were in good shape,” he said. “I was surprised coverage was as good as it was. We’re in really good shape, snow-wise.”

Mike Bogart of the Sumpter Snowmobile Club, which grooms trails in western Baker County, and Ric Schoorl of the Burnt River Snowmobile Club in southern Baker County both said on Dec. 12 that there isn’t enough snow in those areas for grooming.

Bogart said he has heard snowmobiles in the Sumpter area but hasn’t gone riding himself yet.

The two recent storms brought significant snow to the Sumpter area. An automated station near Bourne, about 6 miles north of Sumpter, recorded 10 inches of new snow, as of Monday morning, Dec. 16, and snow was still falling.

Trail grooming budget cut

The 24 clubs statewide that are members of the Oregon State Snowmobile Association receive money each year to groom thousands of miles of trails.

The money comes from Oregon’s gas tax and from snowmobile tag fees.

Clubs also receive money from sno-park permit sales to plow sno-parks, of which there are several in Northeastern Oregon.

The operating budget is down 30% from last year, according to a letter from Dennis Jordan, OSSA president.

Miles, the grooming chairman for the Panhandle Snowmobile Club, said on Dec. 12 that the club, which in the past had no limits on how many miles it could groom, is capped this year at 1,200 miles — about 500 fewer miles than the club usually grooms.

The statewide contract with the Oregon Department of Transportation allows for 20,000 miles of grooming, down from 31,500 miles, Miles said.

“We’ll just have to live with it,” he said.

Depending on conditions through the winter, Miles said the Panhandle club might need to prioritize the more popular trails for grooming.

Jordan, the OSSA president, wrote in the letter that was included in the association’s October 2024 newsletter that “we believe that we as the OSSA Board have taken significant actions to make sure we have good, groomed trails for our snowmobile community.”

“A round of storms gets everybody really excited.”

— Brandon Christensen, Tollgate Trail Finders Snowmobile Club