Fortunately, Hamilton's winter calculations turned out to be way off, too. The first winter saw the lodge one-third full during the week, and with 75% occupancy almost every weekend, at an average of $85 per room per night. "We'd have people pulling up at night on their snowmobiles, begging for a place to stay," says Hamilton. A group of guys would show up one week, and then they'd come back with their wives a few weeks later. Most guests took dinners there, too, spending maybe another $35 or so per couple. The four snowmobiles were usually all out, at $150 a day; the Hamiltons quickly bought six more. They placed one $50 ad in a snowmobile magazine that pulled in $5,000 worth of business. Putting up a Web site increased their inquiry rate by 50%. Some visitors drove up from as far away as Pennsylvania. By last March, the lodge had already been booked for most weekends this winter; Valentine's Day weekend 1999 was sold out a year in advance.
Nearly 85,000 snowmobiles were registered in Maine last season--about one for every 10 people. But in the northern two-thirds of the state, where there are fewer people and far more prime snowmobiling territory, locals say the ratio may be closer to one out of 5. The numbers are similar in New Hampshire, Vermont, upstate New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
What's caused the snowmobile boom? The primary factor that everyone points to is the change in snowmobiles themselves. Today, in contrast to the 1970s, "sleds," while not exactly cushy, are quiet, clean, reliable, nimble, and stable. Windshields keep the chilling air off your head and body, electrically heated handlebars keep your hands warm, and ducts from the engine direct a stream of hot air over your boots. In two full days and one evening of hard riding on- and off-trail, I was never cold or tired, never skidded out of a turn, and never tipped, and I got slightly stuck only once on a heavily treed, extremely steep off-trail slope that probably would have challenged a tank. Most owners say their machines go about three years before they need their first repair.
TUESDAY: On the trails
Hamilton has put me on a bottom-of-the-line machine, but it seems like plenty of sled to me. We head out onto a curving trail and are quickly going about 40 miles per hour, which seems fast for the conditions but not frighteningly so. When we pass other riders heading in the opposite direction, they all raise their arms and make various gestures at me with their black-gloved hands, ranging from holding up one or more fingers to a revolutionary-style fist salute. I'm not sure what to make of any of this, but later I find out that the number of fingers you hold up is meant to indicate how many riders are behind you, and the fist means you're the last rider.
Our first rendezvous is with Jim Young, a burly, friendly fellow who is widely acknowledged in the area to be a snowmobiler's snowmobiler. Young, who lives in a log cabin on a pond with his wife, Millie, leads us off the main routes onto smaller trails that head off toward the mountains and eventually disappear altogether, so we're blazing our own trails as we head up, down, and around tall, windswept slopes dotted with new-growth pine. The views of the surrounding mountains and the lakes below are extraordinary. Young identifies ubiquitous patterns in the snow as, variously, moose tracks, a coyote napping spot, and the marks made by otters sliding on their bellies.
Later we'll head back down to the trails and then across a small section of Moosehead Lake to pull onto the shore that abuts Greenville, a tiny town that's the closest thing in this region to a commercial center. Across the street from the lake is Flatlander's, the restaurant owned by Jim and Millie Young. "We used to save up money from the summers and then go through it all to get through the winter," says Jim Young. "This year we haven't had to touch our savings."
Young's only complaint is that he doesn't have the snowmobile action largely to himself the way he used to. Two new restaurants have opened in Greenville, and another one moved from a prime location on the main street to a spot across the street from Flatlander's--making it the first thing that snowmobilers see when they pull up from the lake. In addition, gas and food are now available at a trail junction two miles outside the town, where many prime customers are intercepted before they make it into Greenville. Young has put up signs along some of the snowmobile trails, and he advertises in tourist publications. The crowds have kept coming.
After riding for a short while on a major trail and then for a longer while on smaller trails, we come to a cluster of cabins at the edge of Second Roach Pond. This is Medawisla, a picturesque resort camp owned and operated by a youngish, rugged-looking couple named Larry and Shannon LeRoy. Medawisla is 27 miles from the nearest town, the last 7 miles of which are traversed by an unpaved logging road. During the winter the road is difficult to navigate, and the last 4 miles to Medawisla are accessible only by skis, snowmobile, or the LeRoys' shuttle. The camp generates its own electricity in a small shack the couple refers to as Medawisla Power & Light, and phone service is by solar-powered radio phones. "We can send faxes," says Larry, "but our connection is too slow for the Internet right now."
The LeRoys still consider Medawisla primarily a summer resort, with a strong fall business among the hunting and fishing crowd. They get $60 to $90 a night for their pleasantly spartan cabins, but most guests sign up for the hearty fare offered on the American plan for an all-inclusive $65 per person. Two years ago the LeRoys decided to try keeping two cabins open for the winter. They sold out quickly. On one of the snowmobile trails they put up a sign advertising lunch, and sleds starting pulling in within an hour. They stocked 900 gallons of gas at the end of the fall and by January had sold it all at $2 a gallon. "We can do as much business as we want in the winter," says Shannon.
