Anderson: With Minnesota far behind them, ‘Old Guy’ snowmobilers close in on Newfoundland

They departed northern Minnesota on Feb. 13, powering their motorized sleds across a bare minimum of snow before entering Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.

Now in Quebec, the three “Old Guy” snowmobilers, as they’re known, are hoping that in coming days they’ll cross into Newfoundland, the destination of their latest expedition.

Aging — but obviously doing so with adventurous spirits — are Rob Hallstrom, 67, of Park Rapids, Minn., Paul Dick, 74, of Grand Rapids, Minn., and Rex Hibbert, 71, of Soda Springs, Idaho.

The three attracted worldwide attention in 2023 when they rode Arctic Cat Norseman 8000X snowmobiles from Grand Rapids to Alaska on an improbable 5,000-mile trek during which they often bushwhacked their way west.

Longtime adventurers and power sports junkies, the trio had previously ridden snowmobiles together from Grand Rapids to Hudson Bay, Canada, a trip that followed marked routes before dissolving into long days of trailblazing.

Dick and Hibbert also have raced in Alaska’s Iron Dog, a 2,500-mile snowmobile endurance test billed as “the world’s longest, toughest snowmobile race.” And a few years ago, as a retirement gift to himself, Hallstrom piloted a Yamaha 250 dirt bike from Canada to Mexico along the Continental Divide.

“You meet a lot of people doing this stuff,” Dick told me recently. “Good, goofy people.”

This winter, the trio’s departure from Grand Rapids on Arctic Cat Riot 600 Catalysts was hindered by a lack of snow. They entered Canada on Feb. 20 after loading their sleds onto a ferry at the eastern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for a short ride to Drummond Island, Mich., from which they skittered their machines atop frozen Lake Huron to the Ontario shoreline.

There, in a cinder block outhouse, they found a phone with a direct line to the Canada Border Services Agency. Anyone entering Canada at that location must use the phone to check in.

“I picked up the phone and a guy came on the other end, said hello and asked me where I was,” Hallstrom said. “‘I said, ‘I’m in an outhouse.’”

On a couple of occasions in Ontario, when the men talked to other snowmobilers, the issue of President Trump and tariffs came up.

“Whenever we were asked about President Trump we’d just say, ‘We like to snowmobile,’” Hallstrom said, adding that without exception snowmobilers and other Canadians they’ve met have been friendly and welcoming.

“It’s especially encouraging to see how healthy the sport of snowmobiling is in Canada,” he said. “We’ve seen groups out for day rides, families using snowmobiles to gather wood and others along our route who, through our Facebook page or other social media, recognized us and wanted to talk."

Hallstrom spoke by phone recently from the small town of Port-Cartier, Quebec, which lies along the St. Lawrence River northeast of Montreal. He described the region as “incredibly beautiful,” with forested rolling hills and small mountains with elevations up to about 3,000 feet.

“We’re averaging between 170 and 200 miles a day,” he said. “Our biggest day was 340 miles.”

The men’s latest adventure is an attempt to stretch their winter travels — and their snowmobiling cred — across North America, from the previously reached Alaska to Canada’s eastern seaboard. While not intended to replicate the stamina trial the Alaska adventure was, this year’s ride is nearly as long — about 4,000 miles.

“This time we’re following a lot of trails and we hope to have a motel or lodge to sleep in at night,” Hallstrom said.

Still, in preparation for possible problems, the men pull custom-made plastic sleds built in Dick’s industrial-size Grand Rapids workshop. The sleds carry heavy-duty sleeping bags, cold-weather clothing and other gear, as well as extra gas.

One day last week, knowing they had 300 miles to ride to reach a small town they believed had a gas station (they try to run premium exclusively in their sleds) and a place to sleep, the men fired up their machines at 5 a.m.

But the village, which the men reached after dark, had fewer motel beds than expected, and all were taken.

“Maybe we didn’t understand about the town because everyone in Quebec speaks French, or maybe we misunderstood because when we talk to people we often have our helmets and face masks on,” Hallstrom said.

Pointed toward another town some 40 miles away that was believed to have a place to stay, the men followed their sleds’ headlights along wooded trails.

“But we couldn’t find the town,” Hallstrom said. “It was getting late, about 10 p.m., and finally we came upon a snowmobiler warming shack, about 10 feet by 10 feet, and we stayed there for the night.”

Following the men via satellite was Hallstrom’s daughter, Kasie Plekkenpol, of the Twin Cities, who with her husband, Mike, can track the trio’s whereabouts thanks to small transmitters attached to the snowmobiles.

“Using the satellite tracker we can overlay where they are with the map we have of their planned route,” Kasie said. “The night they got lost I was a little anxious because I could see they were about 60 miles from the nearest town, and I knew they had been riding since 5 that morning. They have good sleeping bags with them. But they didn’t bring a tent this year, so sleeping outside wouldn’t have been easy. Later, my dad told me he had his boots on that day, night and the following day for 36 hours.”

The three snowmobilers will soon enter — or might already have entered — a 100-mile patch of wilderness that hasn’t been crossed by a snowmobile for at least two years, Hallstrom said. If they bridge that gap, they’ll enter a region of ice roads that joins Quebec, Labrador and Newfoundland — and at that point will be about the same distance from Ireland as they are from Minnesota.

“Our goal in Labrador is to travel a short distance farther east,” Hallstrom said. “Then we hope to double back to a little speck of a town and from it take a ferry to Newfoundland, where we have friends and our trip will end.”

The men plan to leave their machines and sleds at an Arctic Cat dealer in Newfoundland for return shipment to Minnesota this summer. They’ll fly home and regroup before, perhaps, planning another trip.

One possibility, said Plekkenpol, Hallstrom’s daughter, is that next winter they’ll ride from Fairbanks, Alaska, where their 2023 journey ended, to the Alaskan coast with the Bering Sea, which would give them the distinction of being the only snowmobilers to ride from one North American coast to the other.

“I don’t think they’ll ever stop riding,” she said.