Ok so after a week or jet setting this great land of ours I'm finally back at home and having a bit of a day off. This is the happenings of the day as told via my blog elsewhere on the interweb.
A little confusion happened in that I couldn't get a T3 for the weekend. And the Polaris Pro was out of action(presumably a bad motor. I joke I joke)
So we had the RTR Demo, and Leading Edge demo's from 2014 instead.
The XM had a SLP y-pipe, Pipe, and CF can.
The M8000 was stock.
The M1100T had a programmer and a few go fast parts.
Partaking in this ride was myself, my father Robin, and my brother Colton.
So the Reeb boys slide into Revy around 7:30am and go for a bite to eat. Then we get ready for the trail up the mountain. Since we are summer sledding, we have to drive to the snow. No parking lots for us. And after about an hour we hit a dead end. You see, in the winter there are various ways to get to the cabin on Boulder Mtn. But in the Summer, there is only one. (File that one away Kris)
So after going up the wrong trail twice, we finally dive into our newest adventure! Getting stuck in the mud!
After going up the wrong road yet again we got stuck on this slick and muddy uphill. So we start backing down. Down down down and over a old bridge we already crossed. Only this time the bridge decides to give way under the weight of the trailer and planks start to break off and fall into the creek. Yayy!
To avoid the hole Dad swings the front end of the truck in the opposite direction and then starts correcting once the front end of the truck has cleared the newly formed hole. The only problem with this is that in order to get the trailer straight and going the direction we need, the front end of the truck has now fallen off the road and is seriously stuck.
So Dad is livid. It's just past 10am and he's seriously loosing his **** all over the situation. Colton and I immediately jump out of the truck and start shoveling mud and rocks away from the tires.
After about 30 minutes of getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and ruining new shoes in the mud dad decides to call BCAA. Only problem is that we have no service. So he starts walking. And walking, and Colton and I don't hear from him for a solid 2.5hrs. I was afraid to sit around and do nothing so I kept Colton busy digging and placing wood in front of the tires. After a bit we decide to start walking up and down the road. At least this way the effin bugs have to catch up to you before they can latch on and suck your blood like the little villainous vampires they are.
Finally after about an hour of walking we decide to head back into the truck and humidity or not, it's naptime. A quick rest later and Dad is knocking on the window with the tow truck driver casting a long shadow behind him. The guy is a massive man. And he's pissed right off.
He brought a rather large highways truck to pull us out and his 2WD dually just wasn't cutting it. It was rather amazing actually. Colton and Dad winched cable from tree to tree and I operated the hydraulics while the burly dude slowly backed his truck up. It was quite the ordeal. But soon enough we were pointed in the right direction and bouncing back down the trail again. After about a minute dad spoke up and asked to no one and everyone if we should still go sledding. Silence ensued. Colton and I looked at each other and slowly looked over at Dad to try and figure out any sort of hint in his facial expression. Colton piped up first and mentioned that he was up for it still. And I added that it doesn't get dark under well after 9pm nowadays. Since it was just shy of 1pm Dad lit up a smile and gave us a "atta boys!" and off to find the snowline we went.....again.
This time is was easy, we hit snow and a large sketchy uphill and decided to unload right there. Dad took off first without waiting for us. said that if he didn't come back in 10 minutes, to follow him. The minute he left I told Colton to start unloading the sleds. I wasn't waiting no 10 minutes to decide whether to follow him or not. Dad, amazingly enough took the 4-stroke first which left me to the XM and Colton to his beloved Arctic-Cat. We ran up the trail only hitting snow patches that were no bigger than the sleds themselves. But after only about 3-400 yards we hit snow for good. Well, that's kinda debatable. We slid over rocks, we bounced off of logs, we jumped creeks, we generally had a real good time. At least I was having a blast!
You have to realize, for me NOT to ride my snowmobile on a regular basis is like not breathing on a regular basis. Seriously, I don't care what conditions I ride in(more on that later) I'm happier than a free range chicken, than a bird in the open skies, or a fish in a catch n release only lake.
Hit the cabin(not literally) jump over the creek a few times(not that we had to, but it was more fun this way) and up the trail to the Top of the World. After a few more sketchy maneuvers around a few runoff areas that destroyed the trail we had our run of the mountain. The trees opened and the sun was shining, I honestly thought that this must have been how Moses felt when he parted the Sea. Glory I tell ya! Absolute GLORY!
And the snow was some of the worst I've ever ridden in. Pocketed out, rained on, sunken and rock hard. Let a little thing like that chase you away and you're not living! We jumped cornices, sidehilled poorly, drag raced up hills and generally tried to squeeze the trigger as much as possible.
After a time we swapped sleds and I ended up on the M8. Fun sled, good power, I didn't mind it except for trying to sidehill with two feet on the boards. Simply would not happen. I had to be wrong foot forward ALL the time. And that's not something I look for in the characteristics of a sled.
We climbed over Wally's World and dropped into Super. Which was a piece of cake. I ran it up the old drag race hill flirting with rocks and bare spots but the M8 handled it like a champ and kept me propelled forward the entire time.
And then I got cocky. Coming down into the SugarBowl was a little more interesting as I didn't want to simply take the trail. Even when the snow is the ****s and nobody has been on the "main trail" for a month, I'll still avoid it like the plague. Seriously, nothing bugs me more than staying on a flippin' trail!
So, as the story goes, I end up taking lead and I'm trying to find a legitimate route down to the base of Sugar. I turned around once, actually I backed up(up hill!) to get out of one situation. But the next hill I tried was too steep to back up. So once I decided that I wasn't going to launch a brand new demo sled off a 10ft waterfall I slowly and carefully inched it around so I could ride it back out of this situation.
In the meantime Dad found another way down and is now yelling at me to "grab a handful and stop being a *****" Well the old guy simply cannot be given the gift of "one-upping" me so easily. So I turn the sled back downhill and fire it up. I lost all braking power almost immediately and aimed the sled for this rock ledge about the size of a dinner table. I figured I could stop on that and creep my way over the ledge and back to the safety of the snow. Unfortunately that plan lasted all of .2 seconds once I realized my brakes only sped up the machine instead of doing what they were intended for. So about 10ft from this table rock I grabbed a handful and aimed straight down. One rather harsh bounce off the aforementioned rock and another 10-15ft off the waterfall I landed only to swerve rather dramatically to clear Dad and his sled before taking a breathe and looking back over what I just did. Thanks to my expert skills nothing was broken and even the Russian Olympic Judge would have given me a Perfect 10 for that landing.
After that we climbed a few nasty lines and lined the sleds up again and raced them uphill in a never ending bet to see who had the fastest sled.(BTW - I won hands down)
After ducking out of the rain for a bit we explored a little bit more, then headed home. Getting back down the minefield was much more simpler than coming up, as was the truck ride back to civilization. We ran into Herb Shaede at the gate and he supervised me locking her up for the Summer. Last sleds on the mountain is something I can now claim!
We stopped at the tow truck yard and gave the guy a 6-pack and a bunch of business cards. He was happy, we were happy, and it was time to head home.
