With another ATV season behind us, I hope everyone was able to get out with your riding group, and enjoy some great ATV experiences. Fortunately, there were a substantial  number of good days that permitted backwoods travel after being closed all summer. The Eastman ATV Ride Schedule had many challenges. First, we had to deal with COVID and group size. Scheduling became a real scramble and required a lot of planning. Following COVID guidelines required us to split the group into two to meet group meetings outdoors regulation. A second challenge was the fire ban, which was in place for part of June, all of July and Aug. Once again, we were fortunate to be able to reschedule in September and provide members with a new ride schedule. We had 30 machines or more for all rides with some over 60. All rides were scheduled to take place on different routes. We rode  mostly what seemed easy routes for most this past year. The water level being so low this year allowed different riding. The bottom line is the  Ride Crew worked hard and delivered a full ride season!   Thank you Ride Crew!!!

Eastman ATV had its 2nd Annual Steak & Spud Windup at the Lorette Hotel. It was a fantastic success! A big thank you to everyone who attended, and a special “thank you” to all the companies that donated all the great door prizes! At the 1st Windup we sold 80 tickets. This year we sold 140 tickets and raised $5,200. for Eastman ATV. WOW! It turned out extremely well, better than imagined. I hope next year we can lose the masks and mingle after all the prizes have been handed out. Thanks again to Roland Fillion for putting this event together, and, the rest of the team, for helping out. So nice to see so many good friends.

Sled season is here, so our trails are closed. There are many riders who ATV year around. For instance, in Quebec the winter ATV season is bigger than the summer ATV season! Someday it would be nice to have our own snow groomer for ATV trails. Nothing wrong with dreaming! 

Seasons Greetings & have a great December

Hello Eastman ATV, and Friends of Eastman ATV in the Manitoba ORV community. I hope you have enjoyed your offroad experiences this year. The dry conditions put a halt on riding for July and Aug. Equipment was in short supply, for some models, making it a challenging summer to start to ride. Regardless of that, more and more people are enjoying their SxS or ATV, by getting out for the day with friends and/or family. It’s nice to see the growth of the ORV community in a safe family oriented environment.

The weather turned around in September, and fortunately Eastman ATV was able to reschedule the lost summer rides to the Fall.The Fall ride dates provided a full schedule of rides, less one. With the hard work of the Ride Crew, we had our last ride of the season this past Saturday.The weather was perfect. Without any rain or dust, the ride was very enjoyable in the Belair Forest.

Shannon Blair answered Eastman ATVs call for IT help. Shannon is now the administrator for both Eastman and RFM websites and will take over all the tasks required in  running our site.. Shannon and Ryan are also joining our ATV Ride for Mom Committee. Thank you Shannon & Ryan!

Membership with the Eastman ATV community, provides opportunities to enjoy riding the trails with a friendly, sociable group of people. Our rides are rain or shine, except for freezing rain. Otherwise, we ride in all types of weather. It has been a rich year of experiences, on and off the trail with Eastman. I have developed new friendships and along with my old friends,we have enjoyed this riding season. Because of our ride schedule and the ability to follow Eastman ATV on Facebook, we have a record number of memberships.

Currently, we are in hunting season, so consider waiting until December to ride. If you are intending to ride, for safety reasons, consider wearing bright colors, not camo.

The ATV Ride for Mom has had its kick off meeting, the event is scheduled for June 4th 2022. We are looking for a few people to lead. Donations, Media, Photo / Videographer, and Parking are four positions that we need help with.

The events speak for themselves, if you are a member of Eastman ATV you will be getting more specific or detailed updates on this. members are getting their rides back! Lets ride! This Saturday; all are welcome to attend – let Bill know at the email above. 

150 Members
For 2021 we have 150 membership purchases as of Sept 9th. This is a big deal for any ATV Club. A big thank you to those of you who helped build this club, have helped in some way through the years, and the new members building onto this club today. We have our ducks in a row, we need more members willing to step up to the board to help develop opportunities. 

Membership
Please support your riding area. Join the many people that see the $45 online, for membership at https://eastmanatv.com/product/membership-2021  as  your choice to improve your trails. 

All members receive a “Membership / Voluntary Trail Pass ” decal, 2021 Eastman ATV Membership card, and an official Eastman ATV Trail map. 

We are having our Eastman ATV/ Unsmoke Canada trail clean up and ride this Saturday Sept 11/21. The event will start at 9am at the Eastman staging area just off hwy 1.

There will be coffee and donuts to get things started and a trail lunch provided for the first 50 people to attend. (We normally don’t get 50 so come out). We are excited to be partnered with Unsmoke Canada for this event.

We will be forming groups and the first part of the day will be doing the clean up followed by the trail lunch then we will conclude with a ride.  I look forward to seeing everyone and meeting some of our newest members. This is the first time we have a sponsor for our Trail Clean Up, I’m sure it won’t be our last. See you all on Saturday Sept 11th !!!

Please contact Bill Marsh bmarsh@eastmanatv.com and let him know if you are planning to attend, (that way we can order more sandwiches if we need) or just come out.Come out and meet your friends in the outdoors, we would like to see each other.

It’s been a wacky year for many of us, let’s go riding! 

The backwoods travel ban was lifted Friday Aug 21st, too late for our scheduled ride the following day. Many still made it out to ride and enjoyed a few rides since. Im really looking forward to our scheduled Sept. 18 ride, we will be sending a ride update in the next week to club members for ride details. We are going to try to make up at least some of the rides missed due to the fire travel ban. If you want to help Eastman ATV with rides let us know.

I expect we will combine the AGM with a ride again. Our AGM is for you to ask questions, voice concerns and provide your board with guidance as to what you want for your club. Club membership allows you to have a voice with both the government and the organized ORV community. I will provide more information in the next 2 weeks on this event.

Trail maintenance is ongoing, big projects underway demanding time and money from our  volunteer Trail crew. A big thanks to them for their hard work. Fortunately our club is in a reasonable position to buy the needed materials and equipment rentals with one of the 2 grants we worked hard to aquire.

Membership
For 2021 we have 144 membership purchases as of Sept 1st, that beats all of 2020. Please support your riding area. Join the many people that see the $45 online, for membership at https://eastmanatv.com/product/membership-2021  as  your choice to improve your trails. All members receive a “Membership / Voluntary Trail Pass ” decal, 2021 Eastman ATV Membership card, and an official Eastman ATV Trail map. 

Unsmoke Canada
Trail Clean Up, come out and enjoy our trail clean up. We are going to make a day of it, give groups an area to clean and see what we can do. Good day to meet members, and again, more information to follow.

We are considering additional rides or combo events to get more rides this year, I will be sending an Eastman ATV Ride update to members within the next 2 weeks

 It’s unusually dry. No… no backcountry travel is still in effect. We have had little rain, we need 50 ml or more to change the conditions. This is not the time to ride with such a high fire hazard. Do you need any service on your ride? Maybe this is the time to clean it up & spray with silicone to bring that color out.  Perhaps finally install that light bar,  horn, put the fire extinguisher back on, or take it in to get that done. I have finally pick up some extra fuses. I know we are all ready to go, our time will come.

Unsmoke Canada
We are having a trail clean up September 11th & 12th, please come out and support your riding area. You will receive a free t-shirt, water, and lunch from Unsmoke Canada our trail clean up sponsor. A very big Thank You to Unsmoke Canada for sponsoring this trail clean up event. Contact Bill Marsh wmarsh@eastmanatv.com and let him know what day works for you. We will be providing an update next month for you, mark it down on your calendar please, it will be an awesome social event also. 

We had a challenge with our contact list,  it was an internal crash, no security threat and we are in the process of recapturing the email addresses, please bear with us, if you get it at the wrong  email address or not at all, let us know, or you can rejoin our mailing list. We need your help with our email contact list, if you could go to our website and re-join if you do not get this as an email.  I appreciate your help on this as the circle of friends that are loosely part of our group in one way or another. There will be some incorrect or missing emails as I’m working with original email addresses on a one by one basis. Some bounce backs I can fix, most I can’t.  If you do not receive an email by Aug 3rd, please re-join our mailing list, if you’re a member say “hey Don fix this!” Either way I want to be sure we have your correct email on our Eastman ATV Monthly Update, we value both membership, our growing Facebook friends, and associates in our Manitoba Outdoor circle.

We were planning an Outdoor Eastman ATV 2021 AGM to meet Covid 19  restrictions, fire restrictions halt us. We may consider a Zoom AGM.

“No backcountry Travel” has Eastman ATV in a no go position for any outdoor events, we will keep you posted. Thank you for your continued support of Eastman ATV, planning for our future.

WE ARE RIDING

Absolutely uplifting and joyous to be out riding with the club. We had a great ride June 26th from our staging area out to the Whitemouth River with 2 separate groups, both groups had a full day of riding, a little hot but great to be on a ride again with friends

Membership
For 2021 Please support your riding area. Please spend the same as 1/2 tank of gas for yearly support of your trails. Join the many people that see the $45 online, for membership at https://eastmanatv.com/product/membership-2021 as your choice to improve your trails. All members receive a “Membership / Voluntary Trail Pass ” decal, 2021 Eastman ATV Membership card, and an official Eastman ATV Trail map.
I have caught up on the 2021 membership listing and email group. If you are a 2021 member you should be receiving the Ride Update email, if not email me, deidse@eastmanatv.com please.

The Eastman ATV board has been busy at work on all fronts. We have been able to acquire 2 grants very recently so we are very excited about that, one is 50/50 with matched club funds, so your $45 membership is used to match the grant giving us double. the $2,500 grant, $2,500 membership = $5,000 to fix the trail. This has been our biggest membership year with 140 so far with 42 of them new family memberships, I still have a few memberships to send out to members. The Ride schedule is available to members, we have missed one of the scheduled rides, we will try to make it up. Next ride is July 24th, members will receive an update Trail maintenance is ongoing, we really appreciate the people who come out to help on the trail work, thank you.

See the attached statistics on motorcycle and ORV off road equipment sales if you are interested.

Hopefully by July 24 more restrictions are lifted and we can ride as one group, we will keep you posted.