SnoWest

SNOWEST EXCLUSIVE traIls In the West Grand Lake, CO R Western Guide To Snowmobiling Idaho, Wyoming tie with four areas each on list Right now, West Yellowstone, MT, is the Alabama of snowmobiling. Sorry for the analogy but we're big college football fans around here and, quite frankly, West Yellowstone is a juggernaut when it comes to snowmobiling areas in the West. Just like Alabama is dominating and has dominated the college football scene for the past several years, so too has West Yellowstone dominated the Top 15 Trails in the West rankings, and once again is solidly holding on to the No. 1 spot in our 2013 survey of SnoWest Magazine readers. With its No. 1 ranking for 2013, West Yellowstone is on a three-year run on the top. This small town and big riding area is a perennial contender in our annual survey. Wyoming's Continental Divide Snowmobile Trail system did hold the No. 1 spot for three years until West Yellowstone knocked the CDST off its perch and reclaimed top honors. While it wasn't a big surprise—or any surprise at all—that West Yellowstone held on to the No. 1 spot, there were a couple of surprises in the Top 15 this year. One of the bigger surprises was the "snow quality" category/rankings. We thought this category would get hammered in the survey this year due to the somewhat poor snow conditions many parts of the West endured last winter. The snow was okay but certainly not outstanding. Yet this year's overall score of 1.82 in the snow quality category beat last year's 1.90 score. Perhaps SnoWest Magazine readers were just grateful to have snow or maybe the quality of snow last winter was better than we were thinking it was. We know parts of the West—particularly the state of Washington—had great snow, but many of the spots that made this year's Top 15 were average at best—or so we thought until we tallied up the scores. Another smaller surprise, which in a way is linked to snow quality, was the score in off-trail riding, which was also better than last year's (1.77 vs. 1.80). If you don't have good snow, then off-trail riding suffers. So, it stands to reason, if the snow quality score is decent, so the off-trail score should be too. And vice- WG2 WESTERN GUIDE TO SNOWMOBILING 2013 versa. Therefore, we guess the off-trail score should reflect a better score when the snow quality score improves. When we first devised the Top 15 Trails survey years ago, we intended the off-trail to reflect not only the opportunities for off-trail riding but also the quality of off-trail riding. The quality is definitely impacted by snow quality. In hindsight, we shouldn't be as surprised as we were. The scores clear across the survey were very good overall, with the overall average of 1.96 besting the 2012 overall average of 2.04. That continues a trend of better scores, which started a year ago. Back to the trails that made this year's Top 15. Following closely behind West Yellowstone is its neighbor across the Continental Divide, Island Park, ID. Island Park is second again by just .02 of a point, the same point spread as last year. This year's No. 2 ranking is Island Park's third year in a row at that spot. Cooke City, MT, moved up one notch to No. 3 on this year's survey, followed by Alpine, WY, which jumped three spots from No. 7 a year ago to No.

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