Quintin Raasch’s snowmobile bucks like an unbroken stallion, its nose and skis leaping out of the deep snow on a steep mountain slope. Snow flies as the deep paddles on the snowmobile’s track thrash the powder.
Mr. Raasch cracks the throttle, and his machine wails like a chainsaw, lunging forward into a brief moment of flight before landing back on level ground.
The whole landscape-churning routine has taken only a few seconds and, to an experienced rider, is hardly remarkable. In the hands of an expert, a modern snowmobile is the most pliant of dance partners, a technologically endowed beast capable of speedboat-like turns in deep powder and climbs up slopes heart-stoppingly near vertical.
But to the uninitiated, those whose attention may have been drawn to the sport when two snowmobilers died in an avalanche at a competition on British Columbia’s Boulder Mountain last Saturday, it is a revelation of the extraordinary power that can be wrung from a modern snowmobile. Consider this: Last September, the Lamtrac/G-Force 1 snowmobile set a speed record on land of 203.3 mph (327.17 km/h).
There is little doubt that the extraordinary changes in the design of high-performance snowmobiles has allowed enthusiasts to accomplish feats – and flirt with a level of danger – never before possible. But the sport has drawn a growing number of adherents. British Columbia alone counts some 130,000 back-country snowmobilers, and for those like Mr. Raasch, thumbing the throttle has become the equivalent of a direct adrenalin injection.
Mr. Raasch hadn’t expected to fall in love with back-country riding. In fact, he moved to Revelstoke to ski. Snowmobiles were just a convenient way to reach untouched runs in a place that can receive 20 metres of snow in a year.
Soon, he says, “I stopped bringing my skis and started just sledding.”
He was smitten.
Some machines are like dragsters. It’s an ego thing. People want to have the baddest sled in the land. It’s kind of like having the fastest car, the fastest motorcycle, the fastest whatever. — Mark Hoffman
On any given winter day in Revelstoke, dozens – often hundreds, sometimes thousands – of riders like him are inhaling a broad expanse of snow-covered playground. Cornices line ridge tops. Flat alpine areas give way to narrow chutes and perilous cliffs. On powder days, when the sky clears, it’s hard to picture prettier country.
The allure, say snowmobilers, is the “total freedom” to explore that landscape.
The backcountry is a haven for the rule-averse. Even groomed trails don’t have speed limits. There are no requirements to ride here save the $20 it costs to buy a daily trail pass, no questions asked about either competency or preparation.
“You can’t explain the feeling,” says Jonas Angman, who with four friends has flown in from Sweden, each paying $7,000 to come and ride for nine days.
“It’s better than snowboarding, because can go up and you can go down. You can go everywhere. You can just point at the mountain you want to go to and then you just go there,” Mr. Angman says. “It’s sick. There’s no other vehicle that can take you to these places.”
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Listen to Mark Hoffman describe the snowmobiles he builds down in Clyde Park, Montana, and you’d think he was talking about an F-1 race car. Everything is carbon fibre this and turbo-charged that.
“Some of our CMX turbo rockets are over 300 horsepower,” says Mr. Hoffman, owner of Crazy Mountain Motorsports Inc.
“These machines can do 100 miles an hour [160 kilometres] really easy and very quickly. They’re not for everybody, I understand that,” he says. “Some people like to drive a Prius. But some people want a Lamborghini and that’s what we can give them.”
