GREENWOOD TWP — Penguins do like the snow, and so do snowmobilers. So, when a group of Greenwood Township residents decided to form a snowmobile club, Penguins became their name as well as their mascot. And now the Vermilion Penguins Snowmobile Club has been working to create winter fun and safe riding opportunities since 1966. The club currently has 123 annual memberships, which includes close to 270 people since one membership covers a family, and that also includes 12 business members.
The club’s first president was the late Dick Gruben, and the first secretary was Dale Waldron, now 93, who was able to attend the celebration.
“We started the club because we were having so much fun snowmobiling,” she said. Along with grooming trails, the club often hosted weekly rides, some short, and some long.
“One time, we went all the way to Lac La Croix,” she remembered. “It was -50F. There were ten of us, and we stayed overnight at Zup’s Fishing Resort.”
She also remembers there were some snafus along the way. “My husband was always hitting something,” she said. “That was one long day of riding.”
Waldron, who ran the Wayside Café in the 1970s, was an avid rider, along with their Birch Point neighbors Ron and Marcia Vietanen.
“We would snowmobile hard all day,” said Marcia, “and then drop the kids at home and go out.”
“There was no time on the lake better than when we grew up on Birch Point,” she added.
Marcia and Ron were some of the club’s earliest members, and at that time, the youngest of the group. She also remembered the trip to Lac La Croix, when she was pregnant with her second child.
“We’d put on three- to four-thousand miles a year on our sleds,” she said.
Dale’s son, Dana Waldron, remembered when he got his first snowmobile when he was ten, and then spent the entire day riding it around their cabin. He also remembered when he had saved up to buy his own first machine as a teenager, and coming home from school one day to find that his sister had crashed it. Neighbor Ron Vietanen came to the rescue, patching the fiberglass and making it look brand new again.
One of the biggest changes since the club started has been the steady erosion of the winter snowpack season. Many remembered when the snowmobiling season stretched for months and months, starting in November, whereas nowadays trails are often only rideable for one to two months, usually not until January.
Last Saturday, the club hosted a chili and Polish lunch. It was an opportunity for club members and potential club members to check out the club’s new groomer, large storage building, and meet club officers, both past and present. The club building was filled with as many as 100 people who stopped by for the afternoon.
The club grooms 62 miles of trails around Lake Vermilion as well as the Iron Ore Trail between Tower and Embarrass, as well as staking 60 miles of routes on Lake Vermilion.
They also have volunteers who help clear trails of brush and fallen trees, and pack snow early in the season to get a solid base for the groomers over wet and swampy areas.
The club also sponsors weekly group rides, usually on Saturdays, in January and February when trail conditions are rideable.
Gary “Curly” Skogman and his wife, Roberta, joined the club in 1976 when they moved to Greenwood. He became a volunteer groomer, helping Ron Vietanen.
“Our first groomer was a bedspring,” he said with a laugh, pointing out the new state-of-the-art groomer, a 2025 Prinoth Husky, and packer the club put into service last year. The club was able to purchase the new groomer, a $270,000 investment plus $30,000 for the drag, using grant funds for half the cost, and then club dues and donations for the rest.
“We are all volunteer,” said Curly’s current grooming partner, Mike Indihar. “No one gets paid.”
This meant the club was able to build up the reserves needed for the purchase.
Another big improvement was the construction of the Penguin building on Hwy. 77.
“I remember working outside when it was -10F trying to fix our equipment parked in Curly’s yard,” Mike said. Mike and Bergetta have been active members since they moved to the lake in the 1980s. Now Mike is the club president, as well as a volunteer groomer, and now their daughter, Rachel, is the club’s community engagement chair. The club vice president is Tom Mortaloni. The treasurer is Tammy Mortaloni, and the secretary is Karen Saarela. Curly Skogman is the club’s trail coordinator and volunteer groomer. And Don Brown is in charge of the club’s social media accounts.
The club owns two groomers. The second is housed at the DNR headquarters in Tower and is used to groom the Iron Ore Trail.
“Grooming is seeing the world at eight miles per hour,” said Mike Indihar. “You see all kinds of wildlife.”
Rachel Indihar put together two slide shows for the event.
“It was so fun going through all the old photos,” she said. “There are a lot of stories there.” Rachel had her first snowmobile ride when she was two, and as the old photos showed, she grew up with winter snowmobiling trips.
Curly said he’s logged over 146,000 miles on snowmobiles over the years, mostly on local trails, but also some longer trips, including one memorable ride traveling 146 miles from the Twin Cities back to Lake Vermilion, mostly riding on the edge of highways. He figures he’s owned 25 sleds over the years.
Learn more about the club at https://www.vermilionpenguins.com/. The club also has an active Facebook page with trail updates. The club is currently a 501(C)(4) nonprofit, but is in the process of becoming a 501(C)(3), so that donations will be tax-deductible.