Rescuing Barney's Sled

Rescuing Barney's Snow Mobile Febuary, 18th 2006

Last week, Barney, a teacher I work with, came to work telling us how he had to hike out on snow shoes a long way because the steering arm thinger on his snow machine broke. Having had to do that before myself, I offered my services in helping him retrieve his sled. I'm not quite sure I knew what I was was getting into. Above is a picture of Barney bustin' a new trail through the powder, on the way to his injured sled. This was about 10 miles in on a 12 mile trip, in which we had to break trail the whole way. My first thought... Barney's nuts! I'm the only one I know that would go that far into somewhere like that by myself. Ha! It was going to be quite a day- I knew it already.

Click on this picture and it's easier to make out Barney breaking trail through miles of untracked powder. I wonder if he was smiling? I don't think either of my sleds had seen that much pow. Crazy!

One sled tip, a couple of spin outs, a couple of push outs, and two deep powder timbered switchbacks slopes and 12 miles later, we finally reach Barney's sled.

It ran too. Cool. Too bad it didn't steer.

Armed with a meat hanger, a spool of bailing wire, a lasso and a bundle of other rope, we cooked up a plan. We would hook the meat hanger on to the skis of his sled and using a lead rope, hook on to that with one of my sleds and drag it out. Since it still ran, it could power itself a little.

Thus it began. We would pull Barney's sled a few miles behind one of mine, then drop it, go back and get my other sled and then pull his some more. Kind of yo-yoing our way back up the trail.
Our yo-yo method worked pretty well for a while. We did spend an hour taking the belt off (that took 5 minutes) his machine to see if we could just drag it. Dragging it with no power wasn't gonna work. So then we spent another 30 minutes trying to figure out how to put the belt back on. Ha!

Then, while motoring across the flats about 30 mph or so, pulling Barney along behind me- my machine suddenly slowed down. I looked behind me to see a cloud of powder. Barney was flying through air and his sled was nose down buried in the powder. After he landed and gathered himself up we got to digging his sled out and discovered his ski had come completely off. No fear- we figured out to stick the ski back on and then it was off to the races again.

We did good for a while again. Then we got on this steep slope in the trees where the powder was deep. I felt the same sudden slowing of my sled. I was kind of afraid to look back. When I did, I saw Barney's sled, sideways, nearly completely buried and Barney about 20 some yards down the slope, the same way- sideways and buried. After swimming out of his prediciment, and hog-wallowing through the powder back up to his sled, we got out the shovels. By now, we hadn't even bothered to tie them on. Above is a picture of Barney and his buried sled. Good the thing he had a helmet. He used it to land on at least three times that I saw. After we dug his sled out, for the fifth time, we finally figured out that maybe we could use bailing wire to hold the ski to the swing arm, so it wouldn't fall out of the shaft so easy. That worked good. College education really pays off sometimes.

A few steeper side hills we had to dig out a safer trail in, so we wouldn't roll Barney's sled down the mountain. Since his sled was attached to mine, I didn't mind digging. It did help considerably. I'm sure the next folks to pass over the trail apprieciated it too. Ha!

At least we had beautiful weather. Did I mention the tempurature for the day? This is what the thermometer read when I left the house. I think it got up to zero or so during the day.

Eventually we made it back with all three sleds. That's Beaver Creek ski area mountain beyond the track. Barney had to test the snow with his helmet at least once more though before we were back to the trucks. He'd probably tell you his tests had more to do with the driver pulling his sled. Dunno. I do know, that I was pretty tired by the end of this day. Great upper body work out!