It’s entering midwinter according to the calendar but things aren’t so straightforward on a snowmobile, judging from the recent spate of New Hampshire accidents, including one fatality.
“Even though it’s not early in the season, it’s actually early season riding due to conditions,” said Sgt. Glen Lucas of New Hampshire Fish and Game, which handles most emergency calls for off-road crashes.
Fish and Game responded to at least five crashes in Coos and Carroll counties last weekend, including a noontime crash in Stratford in which a Rhode Island man was thrown from his machine and died.
Lucas said conditions are partly to blame.
The season started off with very heavy snow but then warm weather melted most it, bringing more people up north seeking snow but making the North Country’s network of off-road trails harder to handle, especially on powerful modern machines.
“Snowmobiles are so advanced that an inexperienced rider can ride faster without knowing it. They ride beyond their potential more than ever. In the ’80s and ’90s they were twitchy and loud, didn’t do a great job, so you didn’t go fast,” Lucas said.
“What we tend to see now, with limited snow cover and ice, is people are not going slow enough at corners. The same corner where they could go 45 mph in February with great snow, if they go faster than 30, they’re not going to make the corner,” he said.
That appears to be what happened to Robert Leblanc, 55, of East Greenwich, R.I., on Nash Stream Road, also known as Corridor 5, on Saturday.
“He had just bought the snowmobile. He was riding down the trail — the snow we do have off the trail is deep but powdery, so it pulls you in — and it seems he lost control on a corner,” Lucas said. It appears that Leblanc was thrown from his machine and hit a tree; he was taken to Weeks Medical Center in Lancaster but died from his injuries, according to a news release.
Another major factor in the fatal crash was inexperience with the machine.
“If you don’t know your equipment you’re in trouble,” Lucas said. “It’s not tires on the road … with a snowmobile, under the plastic ski is actually a piece of carbide metal; if that doesn’t catch well and do its job well, you’re not going to make the corner.”
Lucas said Fish and Game sees a similar pattern every year in which people new to snowmobiling, or just inexperienced, hit the trails without preparation. That’s especially the case with people who rent snowmobiles; under New Hampshire law, no special license or classes are needed to ride them.
Snowmobiling is a major and growing part of the state’s winter economy. Some estimates are that snowmobilers spend more than half a billion dollars annually in New Hampshire.
The state has roughly 7,000 of groomed trails, most of them on private land and maintained by local snowmobile clubs who can receive some state help from the Trails Bureau, which collects some money from snowmobile registrations and a gasoline tax for off-road vehicles.
Leblanc was wearing a helmet, as are virtually all riders and drivers on snowmobiles due to cold weather even though it’s only required for people under age 18.
“I’ve only seen one or two people in my life who don’t wear a helmet and that’s when they’re going very slow, around the yard,” Lucas said.