An Interview with Rangeley Lakes Snowmobile Club Volunteer Brian Wargo

Some people might imagine a groomer must simply drive over snowmobile trails with the proper equipment in order to keep a well-groomed trail, but I came to find out, the job requires some finesse.

I spoke to volunteer Brian Wargo about the art of grooming late last winter.

“It all depends on the weather. If it rains this weekend, like it’s supposed to be in the 40’s, that could end it. It all depends on Mother Nature and what she wants to do.”

It’s something the Rangeley Lakes Snowmobile Club (RLSC) has to keep constant track of.

“Every week there is one night off, but it should be done pretty much daily. 90% of the trails get groomed 6 nights a week.” Wargo said.

Wargo was kind enough to let me tag along for part of his regular route so I could learn a little more about what it takes to maintain the beautiful trails throughout the winter season.

“If I go out tonight and if the weather cooperates, the trail out to Boy Scout Rd. trail, the railroad bed, will still be kind of smooth. But if it gets warm and there’s a lot of snowmobile traffic, it will get beat up. It can get beat up so quick you can’t keep up with it.”

The challenges might not be easily apparent to the average snowmobiler.

“Even daily almost, people complain about how bumpy the trails are, but we groomed them. There’s nothing you can do if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate…, there’s high volume traffic…, there could be a lot of hot rod motorheads on snowmobiles that are ripping up the trails.”

We met at Oquossoc Marine after Wargo pre-checked the groomer.

Not long after departure, Mary Archer, former RLSC president and current event planner/coordinator, pulled up alongside to check in on the temperatures Wargo would be grooming in. If it’s too warm, it’s not worth going out to groom. That’s why a lot of the grooming needs to be done at night when the temperatures drop.

Archer was one of several who signaled greetings as we left downtown Oquossoc.

“Some people stop, wave, and they’ll tip their helmet up, but for the most part they zip right by you. You can’t tell who’s inside.”

Each night Wargo goes out, it’s a different scenario, he explained.

“Depending on the amount of bumps, or the snow quality that could be super hard. Like this is really hard tonight right now, so I have to put a lot of down pressure on everything to try to cut the high spots off and fill in the low spots.”

Apparently, exactly how to groom is something you have to both see and have a feel for.

“I see it and feel it. Mostly I feel it. Most operators will feel it in their body. I feel what the machine is doing. You kind of feel one with the machine. You sit in the seat, and you can feel what the machine feels. You’ll know whether to raise or lower your blade or drag a little bit or you look in the mirror and see if there’s enough snow in the drag.”

Wargo tried to simplify it for me by summarizing that the snow has to go through the blades, and then it gets processed, the air mixture goes through it, and then it goes out the back of the machine and gets leveled. At this point some snowmobilers passed by us and went over the work he had just done.

“Snowmobiles are supposed to probably stay off it. Again, it all depends on Mother Nature until the snow sets up. It’s got a process time. There’s kind of a big art to this. Everybody thinks it’s about getting out and just driving the groomer around, but it’s not like that. So, when a snowmobiler goes by you, and they see the nice groomed trail and then they cut it right behind you and ride the opposite side of the trail, well, they just ruined the whole trail basically. The snow didn’t have enough time to set up and get hard. They’ll ride through that and every little rip with their throttle or whatever, will make another hole, or the snowmobile will press down into the holes. You can’t cut every high spot or fill every hole in. It’s darn near impossible. So, when they drive through it, it packs down the low spots. Now you just end up with more divots.”

Depending on the weather, the temperature, the dampness of the snow, it can take anywhere from 1 to 4 hours for the snow to set up.

We kept on moving at about 6 miles per hour and he did his best to explain how the machine works.

“The more bumps that you cut off with the front blade, makes it easier on the drag. So basically, the drag is a bonus.”

He showed me how he knocked off the large peaks of snow that were sticking up along the path.

“That will get 99% of it. If I pick the blade up and just drive around with the blade up in the air, now the drag has to do all the work. It’s not cutting and filling all the holes in.”

Wargo has been running heavy equipment all of his life so after Mike Koob showed him the ropes when he first started volunteering, it wasn’t a big stretch to become familiarized with the groomer.

“So it’s like a bulldozer with like a grader blade behind you. So for someone that’s been running machines all their life, it’s fairly easy. When you run a bulldozer, you’ll feel that when you’re trying to grade something nice and level like a runway or a road or something. You’ll feel the machine moving so you’ll know enough to pick the blade up or bring the blade down to cut and fill what’s in front of you to get a nice level product.”

He agreed that for the most part the people who volunteer to do this type of work could be considered big equipment people.

“I mean, you could take somebody and put them in this and train them, it just takes a while for them to get the feel for it. IF they even get it. Some guys just don’t get it.”

The beginning of the more heavier trafficked areas took the most time initially and we went at a slower speed. Eventually the pace of the grooming started to quicken. Wargo said that it was typical that the whole trip would probably range from between 6 and 10 mph.

This is why his entire route, from the Kemankaeg gate, (with a break for a quick meal on the way back shortly after the Kennebago bridge) and back, takes approximately 7-8 hours to complete.

“Once you get out on the logging roads it stays smoother and it will go a lot faster.”

The more I observed, the more I realized how much attention it requires. For example, if you get too close to the edge of the groomed snowmobile trail, you have the potential to fall off onto where the deep, looser snow ditches may lie. With such heavy equipment you could potentially get stuck.

Wargo exclaimed that some people think. “Oh, those things (the groomers) they can go anywhere, but no, they can get stuck.”

On the night he took me out we had one of the newer machines that wasn’t as loud as some of the older groomers and the ride was smoother.

Nowadays everything must abide by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) laws, so equipment vehicles such as this don’t go over a certain number of decibels, and you don’t ruin your hearing.

As we were moving along, he was constantly picking up the blade and putting it down, picking up snow and filling in holes. I commented that it was as though he was adjusting his blades every couple of feet.

He said yes. “That’s why you’re constantly adjusting the blade. It’s not just set it and forget it. You cut it, you fill it, you cut it, you fill it. You cut the high spots off, you fill in the low spots.”

Sometimes he is called upon to cover someone else’s normal route, but he confessed, he’d rather not.

“I prefer to stick to my route. Everyone says it gets boring on the same path each time, but I know where most of the rocks are, know how to fix the corners properly, like I get more pride in a properly maintained trail.”

He laughed and joked that when a complaint was given, he was quick to try and listen to hear if it was his trail or not. But then, more seriously he said that truthfully, the whole team really did a great job.

“Everybody, I mean, Matt (Kennedy) and Chad (Alexander), they’re both excellent groomer operators. They take a lot of pride in their work too.”

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