The man who made the mountain Wostenberg still snowmobiling at 82

On a sunny spring morning at Meadowlark Ski Lodge, 82-year-old Stan Wostenberg walked to the bed of his truck and started to unclip the straps holding in his orange and black Ski-Doo snowmobile.

Wearing denim jeans, work boots and a weathered Carhartt jacket, he might not look like a typical rider, but his roughly 60 years of experience mean he's been riding longer than many snowmobilers have been alive.

"People ... said, 'When are you going to quit snowmachining?'"

Wostenberg laughed.

"I said, 'Whenever my body tells me I'm going to. It'll let me know.'"

After unclipping his machine, he swung one leg over the seat and squeezed the accelerator. The snowmobile's tracks instantly whirred but barely inched backward on the bed of the truck. When the tracks finally moved far enough to touch the snow, however, the machine slid easily out of the truck bed and came to a rest on top of the snow bank.

Before racing the machine up the runs at Meadowlark, Wostenberg took a look over the Bighorn Mountains, pointing out the areas of the Cloud Peak Wilderness he used to ride, though he laughed and said the U.S. Forest Service wouldn't be too happy with him if he tried that now.

For those passionate about snowmobile riding in Wyoming, and especially in the Bighorn Mountains, they largely have Wostenberg to thank.

He was the first to groom snowmobile trails in the Bighorn Mountains in the late 1960s and early '70s and is widely regarded as a pioneer in trail development and grooming in the area.

That grooming helped establish trails that are still used by snowmobilers across the Bighorns. Wostenberg said he groomed the trails for about 10 to 15 years and, in total, covered the same roughly 70 to 80 miles of trail each year using a modified snowcat grooming machine he purchased from Antelope Butte.

At that point, Wostenberg said, there was an already established trail system that he was following, though he did branch out and groom some news ones of his own when the right terrain came along.

"We made it across - groomed them - about once a week, and some of them more than that," he said.

But Wostenberg's contributions to snowmobiling and winter sports in the Bighorns extend well beyond trail grooming and maintenance.

In late 1995, Wostenberg built the first of three solar-powered warming huts that are still used in the Bighorns to this day.

After building the hut in Worland, Wostenberg hauled it to the mountains and then towed it an additional 17 miles to Battle Park, according to the Northern Wyoming Daily News.

"Less than a month after the hut was set up, it was used in the rescue of a Gillette woman who had a snowmobile accident not far from Battle Park," said Dan Viktorin, president of the Big Horn SnoGoers, in the article.

For the warming hut, and his contributions to trail maintenance, Wostenberg was named the 1995 snowmobiler of the year by the Wyoming State Snowmobile Association and received a certificate of merit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But for Wostenberg, snowmobiling and his work for other riders is not done for the accolades, rather it's a passion and a way of life that began in the early 1960s when he first hitched his machine to the back of his convertible in Worland.

"I remember it was in the spring," he said. "I had the top down and they were watering the lawn and I was heading snowmachining. We didn't go very far."

These days, Wostenberg said, he tries to ride a minimum of two times per week, usually by himself. Because he typically rides alone, the back of his snowmobile is packed with enough supplies to survive the night and a small shovel for digging - though the longest he's ever been stuck is an hour or two.

"You just don't panic, you just start digging it out," he said. "You always make sure you're out before you take off; you don't want to do that again. So you ride all different when you're by yourself."

And although spring is his favorite season to snowmobile - you can ride into May, he said - you have to start being careful as the weather gets warmer and snow conditions deteriorate in the mountains. Warming temperatures and melting snow can create gummy snow conditions that are prime for a snowmobile to get stuck.

Currently, snowpack in the Bighorns ranges from 96% to 109% of median snowpack, according to Wyoming Water Resources Data. In addition, the bulk of snowmobile riding occurs between December and mid-April, according to the Forest Service.

"Of course, you've got to pick your days," Wostenberg said. "If you've got a cold front coming in, you've got to be done by 10 a.m. or 11 a.m."

Over his roughly 60 years of snowmobiling, Wostenberg said he's seen the sport go through significant change in both quality of equipment and type and number of riders.

The machines he first used were just 15 horsepower, he said, and now range anywhere from 120 horsepower for standard models to more than 200 horsepower for high-performance models.

And riders have changed too, with about 10% of the number of riders the sport used to have, Wostenberg said.

"It used to be totally a lot of family deal, but the families kind of fell out of it for whatever reason," he said. "A lot of wives rode, and the wife was probably a better rider than a lot of the guys I rode with. I don't know if they mature or they just don't like us anymore, and the guys just don't ever mature, I guess."

Wostenberg said the economy, coupled with the price of machines - $10,000 to $15,000 new - has likely played a role, too.

But in recent years, Wostenberg said, the number of riders seems to be picking back up as people realize the beautiful scenery they can see on the seat of a snowmobile, and that they can do it in the Bighorns with few people to run into.

"It's kind of coming back," he said. "And it's kind of a hidden place here."