First-response teams from Searchmont and Goulais River and the Ontario Provincial Police were called out yesterday after a Snowarama participant was injured about 12 kilometres out of Searchmont.
Goulais Fire Chief Bob Menard tells SooToday.com that the accident happened on the marked, packed trail, when one snow machine plowed into a tree.
The accident scene is shown in the reader-supplied photograph at left, in which the lead sled (further back in our photo) is the one that struck the tree shown.
The other snowmobile (closer to the tree in our photo) wasn't involved in the accident.
The sled, the tree and the arm of the sled driver were all damaged.
The driver was taken by ambulance to Sault Area Hospital for x-rays to his arm.
The sled was taken by Goulais firefighters back to their fire station, where the friends of the driver picked it up to return it to Sault Ste. Marie.
Monday update
On Monday morning, the Sault Ste. Marie detachment of the OPP disclosed that the injured driver was 35-year-old Joe Kilby of Sault Ste Marie.
Kilby "was traveling on the trail when his one ski on his machine entered soft snow on the side of the trail and caused his machine to go off the trail," police said in a news release.
He suffered a broken arm.
The accident remains under police investigation.
It happened around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday.
Prepared for trail emergencies
In recent years, Goulais Fire Department has purchased specialized equipment to handle such accidents on the trails.
They have a rescue sled built specially to transport injured people, as well as heated oxygen to raise the core temperature of patients.
That's sometimes necessary because there's no cell-phone service on most snowmobile trails and it can take a while before emergency service crews can remove the injured.
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