Post by Dave WardWow, absolutely no sled related posts and it is the middle of sledding
season with great riding conditions all over.....
Pretty quiet day here in New Hampshire, so while waiting for the
freezing rain and rain to quit I decided to take a look at
re.sport,snowmobiles. Several posters, including myself, declared this
forum dead over a year ago, but the wake continues.
New England had a late start for winter; December was pretty much a
wash-out, but January was just about all the snow you'd want. By the end
of the month most of New England had 2+ feet on the ground and the
riding was excellent. February was very quiet until the end of the month
when northern New England got another 16" on top of the remaining
18"-24" base. It might be a short season because of the late start, but
the riding was some of the best in many years.
With the snow came increased trail traffic. With the increased traffic
came increased accidents and injuries, and with that came the calls for
more regulations. I'm not sure that more regulations would prevent a
drunk rider from hitting a tree at midnight at 60 mph. Pretty much all
of those factors are well regulated right now.
There's an increasing number of long-track and mountain sleds being sold
here; sleds that are well suited to off-trail usage. Problem is that
there are limited places to operate off-trail legally, so folks will go
stump hunting where they shouldn't, which causes aggravation for private
landowners. Still, the mountain sleds are a minor concern compared to
4-wheelers. The local snowmobile clubs spend a lot of time smoothing
things over with landowners to keep the trails open, and a lot of the
time it's 4-wheelers that set the landowner off.
Picked up a used Yamaha Vector as a second sled and it's a great trail
cruiser and pretty fair on a lake. The engine is a marvel, lots of power
all through the band and at 60 mph it will put on a serious rush. The
4-cylinder Yammi's have more top end, but acceleration is comparable. A
4-stroke triple drives differently than the 2-cylinder 2-strokes I've
had, and sure sounds different.
There, that's a year worth of posts.
Enjoy the riding, there's not that much left (at least around here)