By Stephen W Clark
I always try and resist the temptation to go on early season rides as they almost always lead to broken parts. This year I was determined more than ever to leave the sleds in the garage until we had a decent amount of snow to ride.
But, Last Sunday night I got a call from Chris Burandt letting me know he was in town and inviting me to go riding. Using every bit of self-control, I told him I couldn't go then went to sleep. The next morning I woke up super early to a text from Tony Jenkins about riding. I lay in bed pondering the two different ways I could spend my day: one on my laptop catching up on office work or two riding the backcountry with good buddies.
In spite of my conscience telling me that this was a bad idea I scrounged up any riding gear I could find from last season, grabbed the camera bag and loaded up our new Polaris Pro RMK demo. Looking at the nice new machine on the deck I really hoped the machine would still look as good at the end of the day.
The group was basically who’s who of the mountain segment: Chris Burandt, Bret Rasmussen, Jackson Stock King Luke Rainey, Tony Jenkins, Jared Sessions, Rocky Young and a few others. We met up at BoonDockers in Idaho Falls and headed for the mountains. I’ve been on rides with this group before and they almost always involve mass amounts of carnage. It was definitely going to be an interesting day.
Rainey and Burandt led the group up the sparsely snow covered trail, every once in a while there would be a track of the trail up a sidehill. One track went horizontally across a sidehill with a 90 degree turn straight up and a giant hole. It didn’t physically make sense that a snowmobile could do such a thing, but with these guys it didn’t come as much of a shock. The snow got better as we climbed higher into the mountains. We then cut off the trail and headed up Rainey’s hillclimb practice course. This course is pretty steep and in the middle of winter is pretty challenging but even more challenging with no snow on it.
There were rocks everywhere, some small rocks and others vertical walls. Very sensitive to where my skis went in the shallow snow I concentrated on keeping the skis in the air and keeping momentum. Thankfully I made it to the top where Rainey and Burandt were patiently waiting. Unfortunately, some of the other sleds in the group weren’t so lucky and the hill claimed its fair share of a-arms and drive belts. After an hour so of fixing machines and switching riders around Rainey and Rasmussen both took on passengers and the adventure continued. And as usual with Burandt the ride turned into a game of follow the leader with Burandt leading everyone into seemingly un-rideable terrain. My goal was to at least stay in the group to be able to get a few photos at some point. At one point I was sidehilling across a fairly steep sidehill and was feeling pretty good about my riding abilities. Just then Rasmussen came cruising by above me two up. Maybe I wasn’t doing quite so well after all.
The group then reconvened in a bowl and I grabbed Chris to get some photos, I pointed up at a steep tree’d sidehill and asked if he could sidehill towards me for the camera. He agreed so I h
eaded up and into the trees, getting as high as I dared I stuck my sled on one ski into the sidehill got the camera out and yelled at Chris letting him know I was ready. I was expecting Chris to casually sidehill through the section but oh how I was wrong. The next thing I know Chris is sidehilling towards me pinned on the turbo with both skis in the air, flying below me he then spotted a line upwards and pulled a huge 180 degree hop over and sidehilled back towards me. I’ve seen Chris ride many times before but this time I wasn’t expecting it and was completely amazed at what I had just witnessed. Chris did a similar line a couple more times but on one of the crazy wheelie sidehills he set his ski’s down to go through some trees and clipped a big rock sending him over the bars.
After not being around snowmobiles for 5 months my senses were definitely awakened to how damn cool this sport really is. We definitely all pushed our luck riding in such low snow conditions and some were more unlucky than others breaking parts. In spite of all the carnage it was definitely a ride to remember and a great way to kick off the season. If day one of the season is anything to go by this is going to be an epic year.
