No. 2 - Through terrain, not over terrain. Not everyone desires to go over the top of every mountain. There are many riders who love riding through terrain en route to a specific destination.
For this type of riding, you want the features of a good-handling trail sled with just enough flotation to keep you out of trouble. You don’t need the extra length of the longer track bouncing and rattling you in the bumps.
These sleds are between 8-16 inches shorter than the longer track versions. That means you don’t have quite the tail dragging in the moguls and through the turns.
No. 3 - Leverage vs. muscle. The 140s are not only shorter, but also a tad lighter … not enough to make that a selling point. However, this means that regardless of your size, you stand to have better leverage, i.e. control, over your snowmobile.
Not everyone is built like an NBA power forward. Some of us come in less than six feet tall and others weigh in at around a buck-seventy-five. It’s nice to have sufficient leverage over your sled, rather than feeling like you’re always riding a bull.
No. 4 - Free flying, soft landing. Again, size matters when you are looking for air during your ride. The bigger the sled, the more effort it takes to get airborne. And the more impact it makes upon landing.
The shorter long tracks are capable of getting you up into the mountains where the terrain creates nature’s own launch pads for jumpers. Whether it’s dropping a cornice or ramping up on a snow drift, everywhere you look there’s an opportunity to separate yourself from earth.
The problem with longer tracks is that there is just too much exposure during the landing to bend tunnels or rails. Just a few inches in length can change the geometry of the structure from being bendable to being almost impossible to bend.