Early Winter 2018 | 37 Club News safely and ride right and respect the landowners by staying on the trail! Hope to see you on the trails this season. Roy Arthur, Vice President & Trailmaster shrewsburysnobirds.org Like us on Facebook Barre Town Thunder Chickens Things are starting to ramp up now that membership meetings have resumed after the summer break. Mother Nature seems to be showing us that she wants to cooperate with some early season snow before Thanksgiving. Thanks to a good group of volunteers, our trail system was again set up ahead of hunting season and ready to go before the snow flew and ground began to freeze up. After a few years of reroutes, it felt good to get back in the groove of a “normal” trail set-up season. Although we didn’t have any reroutes, the crew found other ways to allocate a few weekends. For quite some time we have entertained establishing a building to house our grooming equipment from the elements. Last year we signed an agreement with one of our major landowners in the form of a land lease paving the way for us to proceed with this goal. With location selected, crews were able to clear the location, establish a building pad and relocate our conex box and other various club assets to it. The E911 address is in hand and we have power at the site allowing us to plug in our diesel Tucker Cat in between grooming runs. The building spec is in hand and we are underway getting estimates for the next phase.  This has been a great group effort with many club officers and directors chipping in along the way. Thanks to Steve and Jon for spearheading the bulk of the logistics, helping us get to this point! Also in the mix has been a lot of discovery work around re-establishing a trail network in the Berlin area. Jim Dwinell and Josh Walker have taken the lead to see if logistically we can once again connect from Berlin (VT Traveler Center/Applebees area) around Berlin Pond and onward toward Riverton, West Berlin, Northfield Falls, Northfield. This connector will give us an East/ West Corridor to complement the ones north of Waterbury and south in Williamstown and Randolph. They have worked with many landowners to see what is possible and how we might get under I89, worked with the Berlin Select Board, and have had three public hearings to field questions and concerns. At the time of this writing we have not gotten official word but feel we will gain permission to get us beyond the interstate. We continue to work on trail access, working with town residents, landowners and seeing what might be possible. Also in the mix has been support of VASA, looking at this as an opportunity to share resources and cost to establish a year-round trail. WASHINGTON COUNTY