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It was mid January and cold. Even from inside my cozy truck I could only imagine what it must feel like outside, but I had to stop and see for myself. Heading south on US Highway 75 just northwest of Crookston, Minn., near a little town called Euclid I stood on a field approach and stared down the ditch. Passersby either thought I was crazy or relieving myself (or both).
The Highway 75 ditch was supposed to be a groomed trail, but the groomer hadn't come through in a few days and the northwest wind had done its destructive duty. The tops of trail signs struggled to jab through the surface of the concrete-like snow pack. Not much has really changed in this ditch in the last 43 years, certainly not the terrain or the weather. For about a decade in the late '60s and '70s this ditch became a battleground of men and machines, part of a grueling leg of the original Winnipeg to St. Paul I-500 cross country race.
To ride this ditch today at a race pace is no pleasant experience despite gas-charged, long-travel suspensions; hand warmers; and the modern concept of ergonomics. Invisible drifts reach out and smack you like a left hook, crossings and approaches launch you into more drifts, and that wind; that relentless, biting wind. Imagine sitting in the cold saddle of a 1968 Arctic Cat Panther or a 1976 John Deere Liquidator and trying to go the distance; 500 miles all for a trophy, a kiss from a girl with a bee-hive hairdo and a tiara, and a maybe some gas money.
The I-500 was the Big Daddy of all terrain races, still is for many racing purists. Cross- country in the 1970s was serious business. Viewed as a proving ground for machines and ideas, factories even built special sleds just for the purpose of racing cross-country. Machines like the Arctic Cat Cross Country Cat and Ski-Doo RV340 have become collector's items and the stuff of legends.
Let's not forget about the racers. Names like Brian Nelson, Dale Cormican, Jack Struthers, and Kirk Hibbert; pilots of vulnerable mechanical fabrications just trying to hold it all together for a few days and 500 miles.
And those wonderful stories, sometimes sounding as tall as fish tales, but never lacking in grit and adventure. I've seen pictures of riders coasting to the finish line with one ski or various other vital parts missing. I remember hearing of guys who rode half the race with frostbite so bad that they almost lost fingers and toes. And of course there were all the other kinds of triumphs over mechanical failures, like racers who had throttles freeze wide open and were forced to employ chokes and kill switches to control their speed.
The original I-500 began in 1966 as part of the St. Paul Winter Carnival. About 50 riders turned out and about half finished that first year. Really, not that bad if you consider the equipment options and the distance involved. Over the years the race itself faced its own rough terrain. A period in the early '80s put the race on hiatus due to unpredictable weather conditions. Then the race course changed to running from Thunder Bay, Ontario to St. Paul. There was a stint in the '90s that brought the race to the Lake of the Woods area. Finally, after bouncing around to several different locations, the I-500 seemed to find a permanent home just outside of Thief River Falls, Minnesota and running through the Red Lake Indian Reservation.
Environmental impact concerns and land use permits make the running of a continuous 500 mile course nearly impossible today. The modern version of the Red Lake I-500 is run in loops of varying terrain and mileage. I once lamented all that I perceived was lost with the discontinuance of the old 500-mile course that is until I experienced the Red Lake I-500 myself as a course sweeper.
If you think, as I once did, that the modern I-500 has lost any of its legend or rugged resolve, it hasn't. There is still an eerie lonesomeness to the course, a feeling of being Out There, in many senses, just you and your machine. The terrain is still awesomely humbling and the weather can still be ferociously relentless. Standing in the work area after the race, you still get a daunting sense of what the machines and the riders are put through, even 43 years later with all of the modern advances.
I constantly hear riders and racers alike say that they would love to start and finish the I-500, just once. Not necessarily win it or even place in the top five, just finish.
Like a baseball fan seeing a game in Wrigley Field, a NASCAR enthusiast visiting Daytona, or an Indycar nut at the Indianapolis 500, snowmobiling's I-500 has that certain "thing" about it. And just like Wrigley, Daytona or Indy the race is accessible, pretty much always has been. Unlike other legendary events, anybody can enter, anybody can compete, and anybody can finish, although only a few are able to and that, to me, makes it the greatest race.
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