I have found that the best friend in the world is one who owns snowmobiles and is looking for someone to hit the white trails. And last week I hit paydirt.

Four of us all gathered at Leon Mansfield’s home in Dry Fork Canyon last Friday morning and soon we were on the road and up the canyon within 30 minutes. Dry Fork Canyon has a great staging area for snowmobile trucks and trailers about three miles up the canyon, the starting point for our trip.

Before long, the four machines were offloaded, started and warmed up for the day’s outing. Our mix-matched group included a newspaper publisher; Blaine Nowling, who just moved to Vernal and is in the dental business; Randy Merrill, who is in the boot making business and Leon Mansfield, a retired human resource expert who just happened to have four snowmobiles and three newly found friends.

Blaine moved to the Basin from Montana and bragged about knowing people who had to travel from their home seven miles on snowmobile before they got to where they parked their car to begin coming to town. He also talked about horizontal snowstorms and something about the wind recycling snow around (blowing the same snow) around his house all winter long.

Randy Merrill bragged about his father maybe owning the first snowmobiles in the Basin, back in the day when they were known as Skidoos and Evinrudes and other names that were unfamiliar to one so young as I.

Mansfield just looked at the group and started getting a little worried about the safety of his machines.

In the end, we might not have been the best-dressed snow enthusiasts in the world, but we stayed warm and mostly dry and we were enthusiasts just the same.

The road up Dry Fork was groomed and made for easy travel.

We turned left on the road going down to Ashley Twin Lakes and even had some drag-racing time on what is known as Goose Lake. We then started up through the trees to the northwest and ended up at the bottom of Gabbro Pass where I got a little mixed up between the need to lean way out on the right side of the machine and instead still had my foot on the left side.

And yes! A snowmobile will tip over and if there are rocks involved, the windshield can break.

From there, we made it up through the pass and onto a bally hill top just west of Leidy Peak and literally, we could see forever. As we looked north we could see Manila and Antelope Flat of Flaming Gorge.

And, then as we looked further north we could actually see the snow peaks of the Windriver Mountains. Not a bad place to take a photo at the 12,000-foot level.

We looked to the south, but I don’t think you want to know what we saw. Well, it wasn’t much. The soup fog that has been sitting over the Basin for the past week was still in place. But the beautiful blue sky that was situated above the fog was sure pretty.

We did enjoy four to five feet of powder snow both in and out of the trees. The quietness up there is always warming to the soul. This is a place that you can actually sit and hear nothing. A chance to do some serious thinking, like, “Is this a good place to have lunch?” Which we did.

In the end, we only had to dig out three machines and find two dumped riders. We rolled two machines and saw some of God’s most beautiful creations during the six-hour, 70-mile round trip.

If you are a little bored this winter, then I suggest finding a “friend” who owns some snowmobiles and start taking over fresh-baked cookies or something to get in good with someone who can show you some spectacular vistas. I can vouch that it is well worth the effort.