Sledding
I was at my uncles this weekend to see that bit of family I have up in Edson. I love my uncle’s place. He lives on an acreage bordered on two sides by a river. He has an awesome dog named Carter who is about the size of a wolf and just as gentle as can be and so well behaved. He has all sorts of tools, and other toys. Last year when I went up he had three Ski-doos and I would drive a couple of them in the field and around the pathways in the woods on his property. I drove them slow, easing into corners and the like.
This year I decided to push it though. With the lighter machines like the Bravo and the old ’77 440 I really worked on my weight transferring. These machines tend to lift if you put them into a corner too hard so you have to lean into the turn. The more weight you transfer into the turn the more it stays on track and the better it turns. I really worked on the technique and after being thrown off a couple times I really got the hang of it. I also practiced slide turns involving applying a bit of brake at the entry of a corner causing the back end to slide out and then transferring into the corner and then out to compensate for oversteer. What makes the light machines fun is they are so light that this is really easy to do.
Between my Uncle Jim and his brother in law Bill we had four machines. The 440 and the Bravo were the light ones that you could really bust around and off jumps by the bonfire piles in the back of the property. The other machines were both Artic Cats and had significantly more power. The one cat was an EFI and it zipped. It also weighed a ton which puts you at the mercy of the machine because suddenly weight transferring isn’t anywhere as effective as it was before. Though it was a lot better at slide turning, and the exit velocity you could get in a corner was almost scary considering I passed on wearing a helmet.
The other sled was brand new. My uncle sold the two other machines he owned earlier in the season in trade for this one. This machine was a $16k Artic Cat M1000. The 1000 stands for 1000 cubic centimeters of engine displacement. It had a two stroke engine and so much torque. The speedo topped out at 160kph. That should be enough to tell you what kind of machine this is. It is also huge, long enough to seat six, maybe eight if you crammed.
Of course when we were running the machines I asked him if I could try running it across the field. He agreed but told me to be careful with it. As I hopped on Bill told me that I had to really ease into the throttle. He tried it the day before and hit the accelerator a little too hard and the track dug through the two inches of snow on the ground kicked up some of the gravel that makes up the driveway. So I ease it out slowly to the field and once in I hit on the accelerator. Not fully, just more intensely then previously. Fuck did that corner come up real quick and the tears from the wind this thing made me almost unable to see. This Cat weighs about the same as the EFI cat, even though it is much larger in overall dimensions (newer/performance orientated) so I was again at the mercy of the machine being unable to weight transfer this beast in the corner. I didn’t even try sliding it in the corner. Too Big.
Then I end up at one end of the field, I back into the corner (it has a reverse switch), and I try opening her up. I ease into it but I only get it less then half open when nerves and a fence force me on the brake. I later talk to my uncle and he tells me how he did the same thing but opened it up the whole way and travelled across the whole field, with it all the way open. He also made point of mentioning that until he backed off the throttle the whole front end had lifted up and stayed up in the air. That is a scary amount of torque, especially to a rider like me who has only logged a single digit number of total hours on these sleds.
It is this kind of shit that makes me love living in Canada. I am definitely going to try and go on one of those weekend trips to jasper with my Uncle on the sleds this year. That will be sweet.
Well more about time at Jim’s with the truck’s problems, the dogs and the bonfire later.
This year I decided to push it though. With the lighter machines like the Bravo and the old ’77 440 I really worked on my weight transferring. These machines tend to lift if you put them into a corner too hard so you have to lean into the turn. The more weight you transfer into the turn the more it stays on track and the better it turns. I really worked on the technique and after being thrown off a couple times I really got the hang of it. I also practiced slide turns involving applying a bit of brake at the entry of a corner causing the back end to slide out and then transferring into the corner and then out to compensate for oversteer. What makes the light machines fun is they are so light that this is really easy to do.
Between my Uncle Jim and his brother in law Bill we had four machines. The 440 and the Bravo were the light ones that you could really bust around and off jumps by the bonfire piles in the back of the property. The other machines were both Artic Cats and had significantly more power. The one cat was an EFI and it zipped. It also weighed a ton which puts you at the mercy of the machine because suddenly weight transferring isn’t anywhere as effective as it was before. Though it was a lot better at slide turning, and the exit velocity you could get in a corner was almost scary considering I passed on wearing a helmet.
The other sled was brand new. My uncle sold the two other machines he owned earlier in the season in trade for this one. This machine was a $16k Artic Cat M1000. The 1000 stands for 1000 cubic centimeters of engine displacement. It had a two stroke engine and so much torque. The speedo topped out at 160kph. That should be enough to tell you what kind of machine this is. It is also huge, long enough to seat six, maybe eight if you crammed.
Of course when we were running the machines I asked him if I could try running it across the field. He agreed but told me to be careful with it. As I hopped on Bill told me that I had to really ease into the throttle. He tried it the day before and hit the accelerator a little too hard and the track dug through the two inches of snow on the ground kicked up some of the gravel that makes up the driveway. So I ease it out slowly to the field and once in I hit on the accelerator. Not fully, just more intensely then previously. Fuck did that corner come up real quick and the tears from the wind this thing made me almost unable to see. This Cat weighs about the same as the EFI cat, even though it is much larger in overall dimensions (newer/performance orientated) so I was again at the mercy of the machine being unable to weight transfer this beast in the corner. I didn’t even try sliding it in the corner. Too Big.
Then I end up at one end of the field, I back into the corner (it has a reverse switch), and I try opening her up. I ease into it but I only get it less then half open when nerves and a fence force me on the brake. I later talk to my uncle and he tells me how he did the same thing but opened it up the whole way and travelled across the whole field, with it all the way open. He also made point of mentioning that until he backed off the throttle the whole front end had lifted up and stayed up in the air. That is a scary amount of torque, especially to a rider like me who has only logged a single digit number of total hours on these sleds.
It is this kind of shit that makes me love living in Canada. I am definitely going to try and go on one of those weekend trips to jasper with my Uncle on the sleds this year. That will be sweet.
Well more about time at Jim’s with the truck’s problems, the dogs and the bonfire later.