Paudash Trail Blazers Snowmobile Club

It started with a request from the Risk Management Committee to replace the word “map” with “guide” everywhere to help position these as informational reference pieces as opposed to being actual, surveyed and certified navigation tools.

The OFSC’s annual update of “mapping” guidelines to assist districts, clubs and associations with the development and production of their 2010 trail guides turned out to be a major overhaul this spring. It started with a request from the Risk Management Committee to replace the word “map” with “guide” everywhere to help position these as informational reference pieces as opposed to being actual, surveyed and certified navigation tools. Next, risk management requested that existing OFSC policy statements pertaining to trail guides, photos and printed materials be incorporated into the guidelines as mandatory requirements.

At the same time, the OFSC conducted a major review of all 2009 district guides, the OFSC TOP Trail Guide, and other provincial guides to get a clearer picture of what worked and what did not from a user perspective. This review led to a list of “best practices”, an overview of most desirable and snowmobiler-friendly features that should be included on all of our trail guides to increase their usefulness and value to riders.

The main objective of the new Best Practices list is to achieve a greater level of consistency among all guides, so that riders can count on things being shown with a similar look, in the same way and with the same symbols. None of our districts are silos separate from one another, and many snowmobilers move from district to district, so it is important to achieve more integration, so that all of our guides are more uniform for risk management purposes.

The OFSC led the way. Its provincial guide is among the first to benefit from this new approach. Originally launched in 1993 to promote the TOP Trail System, the provincial guide has served this purpose, but also developed several shortcomings. First, the trail face itself has been increasingly overwhelmed throughout the years by encroaching advertising, to the point where showcasing the trails was looking decidedly secondary. So the 2010 guide will feature a 20% larger guide face, with smaller ad spaces that restore the original balance and purpose.

Second, as the name implied, the “OFSC TOP Trail Guide” only showed Trans Ontario Provincial trails, less than half of the total OFSC trail network. At a time when Ontario is competing with other provinces and states for visiting snowmobilers, and when we are trying to attract new participants with the Go Snowmobiling Campaign, the TOP Trail only approach is now a serious disservice to our clubs, districts…and to snowmobilers.

So for 2010, the OFSC provincial guide is being renamed as the “2010 OFSC Snowmobile Trails Guide.”

It will now show all TOP Trails PLUS all club trails.

The OFSC should be showcasing all 40,000 kilometres of our provincial trails so everyone knows how much we have to off er. For example, if you were an American looking to go snowmobiling in this country who knew nothing about Canada, and you compared the OFSC TOP Trail Guide to the Quebec provincial guide, your impression would be that there are far more trails to ride in La Belle Province (in fact, they have 6,000 or so fewer kilometres than we do). Or how about a group of snowmobilers trying to get a big picture overview of OFSC trails to decide where to go for their winter vacation? The OFSC TOP Trail Guide is misleading in that it does not show them the full range of opportunities to explore in each area.

So for 2010, the OFSC provincial guide is being renamed as the “2010 OFSC Snowmobile Trails Guide”. It will now show all TOP Trails PLUS all club trails. This is now possible without looking too cluttered because the guide faces are larger. Club trails will be shown in orange as per the new “Trail Guide Production Guidelines”, but will not have any numbers or identifiers. The purpose is simply to make people aware of that a myriad of club trails exist — and to drive them to district and club guides for details and more information (as now specified in the 2010 Legend).

Another advantage of this new inclusion of club trails is that now the various district guides make more sense. Before, how was a
snowmobiler supposed to know that each district guide actually showed a snapshot of a specific region – zoomed in from the provincial guide - when that provincial guide did not give any clue that club trails even existed!

Your 2010 trail guide is an ideal opportunity for each district to upgrade and improve its image with snowmobilers…and the more useful your guide is, the more it will be used. And that’s an added value for your clubs and for your advertisers!