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With the crazy winter Mother Nature threw at us this year, popular northern sledding destinations were besieged with riders going to where the snow is. Rather than risk dealing with full hotels, no parking, long waits for food and fuel, and heavy traffic on northern Ontario highways (can you imagine?) we opened up the OFSC Interactive Trail Guide looking for something a little different. Was there somewhere we could go that’s less than 7 or 8 hours drive away? Manitoulin Island popped onto our radar and we decided to zoom right in.
Much to our surprise we found that the island is home to almost 400 km of trail not including three of the longest and most scenic ice crossings in the Province. That set off our “sled senses”. The thought of finding trails where there might be less traffic with only a 4.5 to 5 hour drive seemed almost too good to be true. We delved deeper by pulling up the Manitoulin Snowdusters SC FB page and were excited by their posts and pictures. Why hadn’t we seen this before? What were we missing out on all this time? What was this hidden gem? We had to find out. We’d both been there in other seasons doing things like fishing, hunting or riding bikes but we had never considered this for a sled destination. We were going to change that. Facebook is a great tool, one quick message to the club FB page, and we were invited to join a few of the members on a ride.
