When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Snow???? We usually don't get much snow anymore. The last few years we have had about 1 massive storm each year, right around the beginning of Feburary. Other than that snow is getting rare around here, it gets bitter cold in the winter though.
Snowmobiling is one of the things I have never done...
I'd like to race them!
Its a lot harder than most people think. They look at a sled and think, "no clutch, no shifting, it cant be too difficult" and they are very wrong. It takes a lot of courage, strength and endurance to be fast on a snowmobile.
I used to hang out with a group of guys who race motocross and one winter they bought a bunch of sleds are were going to get into snowmobile racing. After 1 day of trail riding with me (during which none of them could keep up and by the end of a mere 50 mile ride they were all so sore they were whining that they wanted to go home) they all sold their sleds and gave up on it.
Today's snowmobiles are 150+ hp and weight 450-500 pounds. Ive been riding snowmobiles for the past 15 years and I ride at least 1,000 miles every winter and every year I test ride all the new sleds. In the summer I lift weights and I mountain bike, so Im in pretty decent shape and even for me, the newer, high-performance sleds are a lot of machine to hold onto. Not very many people can just hop on a sled and be fast. There have been pro motocross racers such as Doug Henry, Jeremy McGrath and Doug Gust who have tried their luck in racing snowmobiles and none of them could do it, but lots of snowmobile racers race dirtbikes and ATVs in the summer months.
I think a lot of people underestimate just how much performance today's snowmobiles really have.