Why wear protective gear?

Story as related by Dooradical.  You can find his profile at www.DiscussPowerSports.com. He has been a member there for a while. His story is as follows:

As many of you know I was bating around the idea of buying knee guards for some time.  I always thought to myself I have never needed them in the past, so why would I need them now.  I knew however that thinking that way was naive and kind of stupid.  I finally decided that I needed some.  This decision was helped by the fact that in 2005 my older brother crashed into a deep ditch and shattered his knee cap.  He also wrecked the rental sled too.

Well this last Christmas my wife bought me some knee guards.  They aren't anything really special.  They only cost $20, but they easily paid for themselves last Friday.

We decided that it had been a couple of weeks since we had taken my dad out snowmobiling with us.  My dad really enjoys going, but due to his age he has a hard time keeping up with his sons.  So last Friday we decided to go to Hardware Ranch in Utah.  It is a great place to go and ride trails.  They groom them, and there are is a lot of pretty scenery to enjoy.  They even have an Elk reserve during the winter.  You can go on sleigh rides right though the middle of the herd.  It is pretty sweet.  The only down side is this year not a lot of snow has fallen at Hardware Ranch.  As a matter of fact in some placed on the trail we where riding on rocks.  But non the less it was a perfect place for my dad.  And the fact that there wasn't any powder deterred my brother and I from getting off the trail in a spot that my dad would have a hard time in.  So all in all it worked out.

When we were getting all our gear on, I had to decide if I wanted to wear my knee guards or not... after all we were just going to be on trails so why would I need them, Right?  I decided to put them on anyways. Boy am I glad I did.  We got into this bowl with a steep hill climb that usually is covered nicely in snow.  Don't get me wrong, there was snow there, but not much.  However there was enough to have covered up a ditch that ran across the valley.  I decided I wanted to go climb the steep hill.  I stopped about 20 yards from the base of the hill.  Then I waited for my brother to catch up to me.  Once he was there I started going up the hill.  As I picked up speed I all of the sudden found myself  off of my sled and feeling pain in my knee, neck, and back.  My knee hurt the most.  It felt like I kneed a brick wall.  It was a dull throbbing pain.  It is hard to explain, but I knew that if I had not been wearing my knee guards that the dull throbbing pain would have been much worse.  I think I probably would have ended up like my brother, and in the hospital with a shattered knee cap.  I am glad I didn't.

The sled was not hurt in the accident as far as I know.  It just abruptly stopped the sled, and my bodies momentum carried.

The video is hard to see exactly what happened, but I will show you anyways.



Thanks for reading and watching,
DPS

Such a Cold Ride

We went out on January 11th to see if we could find any of that fresh snow that had just fallen.  To say the least it was cold and stormy up there all day.  The cold really didn't bother me until the end of the day when we had to ride the trail home.  Anything that had gotten wet absolutely froze stiff.  For me that was my gloves.  They didn't get wet inside, but the outside was damp.  On the trail I started noticing that my fingers where getting a bit cold.  I turned on my snowmobiles hand warmers.  It helped a little, but not enough.  Soon my hands were stinging.  I eventually couldn't take it anymore.  I stopped on the trail and with frozen fingers I unzipped my tunnel bag (Painful) and got out my spare gloves.  Once I put them on I instantly felt warmer.  Soon my hand warmers felt like they where actually doing something and the rest of the ride to the car was pleasant.

Lessons learned on this trip -
1.  I have never needed to change my gloves before, and was seriously contemplating why I keep a spare set in my bag.  Now I know that it is indeed a necessary item.
2.  Extra goggles is a must.  My goggles did fine the entire day.  Until In the video you will see a part where I am climbing a steep hill (toward the end).  Before climbing this hill I took my helmet off, and the inside of my goggles fogged up instantly.  Usually in this situation I can just fan the goggles with my hand, or swing my helmet through the air to clear up the fog.  On this occasion the fogged lenses was compounded by the frigid cold air.  The fog condensed, and instantly froze.  Ice formed on my lens.  I climbed up the hill with very low visibility.  This is dangerous to say the least.
3.  Cary a GPS.  With the low visibility at the end of the trip we almost got lost.  Luckily one person in our group kept a good sense of where he was.  Thanks PinNwiggle!  We were on top of a ridge that we usually follow over and down to the trail.  because of the low visibility we ended up one ridge over from where we needed to be.  When we started following it down we ended up in unfamiliar territory.  Eventually PinNwiggle got us back on track.  Had he not of been there we could have been turned around for some time.

Ok, Ok, enough about that.  Here is a video I threw together of our ride.  Despite all the complaining you just read about above.  We had a great time. We had my friend with us who doesn't have a lot of time on a snowmobile so we spent some time giving him some instruction too.  It was fun to watch him apply what we said to do.  If anybody wants to ride in Northern Utah or Southern Idaho area go to www.DiscussPowerSports.com, sign up and PM or Email me.  We can arrange a trip and show you around.  



Thanks for reading,
DPS

Cool New Sport

If you have a paraglider, I have a snowmobile.  Lets go to a field and give this a shot.  It would be so much fun to try.


Thanks for reading,
DPS

Best Powder of the Season

On December 27th 2012 we got up on the mountain right after a big storm.  Well actually we got up there during the storm, but the biggest part of the storm happened the day before.  It was so much fun to Boondock with powder flying over the hood.  It was the first time that the snow has been deep enough to clog up my intake system and bog the sled down a little bit.

Bogging... It sucks really bad to have less power up on the mountain when you need it most.  I have read that the earlier model Summit XP's have had the problem where the intake gets clogged with snow on the filter and then bogs the motor down.  There are a couple of solutions out there that I have been looking into.  There are some "do it yourself" solution (I like those) and some buy off the shelf solutions.

One of the off the shelf solutions that I saw last year was these little doors that you install on the top of your air box.  They are cool because they stay closed unless the motor draws a certain amount of vacuum and the stock intake cannot deliver the amount of air needed.  These are perfect for when the intake is clogged with snow.  When you stab the gas the little doors open up allowing enough air to get to the carbs.

I did a search for these and I cant find them anymore.  So I am asking for your help.  If you know what I am talking about and know where I can find them, please leave a comment here letting me know where they are.  Or better yet, go sign up on the forum www.DiscussPowerSports.com and start a post about it.

Anyways here is a video of our ride.


Thanks for reading,
DPS