Thursday, April 15, 2010

Arctic Man

Okay for those of you who don't know what Arctic Man is, it is like Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, just with snow machines. All of the weeks festivities lead up to race on Friday (weather permitting). This race is where a skier or snowboarder takes off at about 5800 feet and drops to 1700 feet in less than 2 miles and then meets up with a snowmachine and a tow rope. The snowmachione pulls the skier up a hill about 2 more miles at speeds of around 90 mph. The skier then lets go of the rope and drops another 1200 feet to the finish. It is a must see.

 There is an old saying that it takes all kinds to make the world go round, well we definitely found the "all kinds". I think next year we will get a bit better spot than where we were located this year, down 6 spots from the bar and right next to the main road leading from the camps to the bar, lets just say we didn't get much sleep LOL.

Neither one of us knew just quite what to expect, until we saw motor home and tent city come into view, then visions of Woodstock rolled into our head...... As you can see by the first picture people didn't have much faith in the bathroom facilities and brought their own ;o)

Necessities.. snowmachine and porta potty.














The sunsets where gorgeous, and the nights were cold














Our trailer, is the black one in the picture, the bar was right across from the the blue tent and the sign you see in the distance.













One of my favorite pictures.













Us by the Alaska pipeline.












Maybe this should be a new races at arctic man (falls under the all kinds category), this was on top of the mountain and apparently the guy in the chair rode like that all the way up there, insane!












Too many snow machiners, in one place you know there is trouble, quick call out the national guard!!












There were fireworks battles almost every night we were there



























Apparently anyone can do this event even a 6'4" Ewalk












They are traveling at roughly 80 miles an hour, can you believe it?























































Pick up spot, the skier comes from one valley and the snow machiner comes from the other, the snow machier, throws the skier a tow rope and off they go, 80 plus miles and hour, until they hit the drop off point.












































Our camp is down in the middle.














I did take my vintage 1977 Kawasaki Sno-jet to compete in the vintage hill climb. Unfortunately the jet was too rich and I had a hard time keeping it running. I did make the race but just a bit too boggy to finish well.






The inside of our trailer worked out pretty nice with the help of a Mr buddy heater.



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