First Snowmobile Opens Remote Backcountry

In 1962 my father, Robert "Bob" Jalbert, bought one of the first snowmobiles in northern Maine, a Polaris Sno-Traveler. The snowmobile gave my grandfather, Willard Jalbert, Sr., access to remote backcountry that would have required a day or days to access on snowshoes.

When he was younger, my grandfather hiked more than a day on snowshoes miles up the Allagash River to run a trapline. When a blizzard caught him and Jasper Kelly by surprise, Jasper hacked through the wall of a beaver house. When my grandfather asked if there was enough room for him, Jasper hollered, "Find your own beaver house."

My grandfather's brother, Sam Jalbert, and his son, Ray, snowshoed twenty-five miles up the Allagash River. At the mouth of Musquacook Stream, they followed a trail along the stream for a mile to their trappers' camp.

Ray was twelve-years-old when his father took him out of school to trap for the winter. He was a couple of years older when his father fell through the ice on Musquacook Stream. Fearing for his life, Sam yelled for Ray to break trail as they ran on snowshoes more than two miles back to camp.

Sam had arranged for a bush plane to fly them and their hides back to Allagash Village. As it turns out, Sam and Ray were so successful trapping beaver, marten, and sable the hides were too heavy for the bush plane to fly the trappers downriver. They snowshoed another twenty-five miles.