The New Polaris

The new 2012 Polaris snowmobiles were just announced and I couldn’t be less disappointed. I’d love to trade in or sell my 2006 Supersport so I could get a liquid cooled two-up trail machine that gets good mileage but it’s not gonna happen.

Zemanta Related Posts Thumbnail

The new sleds are just plain ridiculous. They’re either one-person snow-cross machines with no protection or they’re giant behemoths with all the amenities of a Cadillac. Almost every model is $10k or more and the trail cruisers are all but gone. The new machines have almost no resemblance to the sleds of old, like the 1974 colts my parents bought and rode all over the adirondacks and to camp miles into the back country (pictured).

img4132

Our family has always stuck with Polaris and they’ve always been beautiful machines. That might need to change now. There’s no way I’m spending $10k on a snowmobile. Skidoo makes a nice 600 with a two-up seat, a larger windshield and better mileage for about $7k and even that seems ridiculous.

Snowmobile Tickets and Skylines

White Face MountainToday was bright and sunny too. They sky was so clear we had to go up Littl Blue Mountain(edit: the previous link was wrong and linked to little blue not littl blue) again. We did and there were actually other people at the top! Some guys were fiddling with a broken down 2007 Yamaha and I had to snicker. Give me a Polaris any day. Mine is a 2006 but my parents have a 1979, 1995 and 1997 which are all still running solid and they’ve never had to do much to any of them.

From the top of Littl Blue we could see White Face Mountain crystal clear almost 70 miles away. The picture doesn’t come close to doing it justice but it’s the best I could do. Just the shear vastness of the space you can see up in the mountains like this is always impressive. I created the panorama to demonstrate.

View From Little Blue Mountain - Panorama

We had our snacks on Littl Blue and then headed down for some scenic riding. Along one of the main trails we hit a snowmobile traffic stop. Yes, on easter sunday the cops have nothing better to do than look for snowmobilers riding without insurance and with expired registrations. We were all valid and were just about to go when the cop noticed my insurance paper had expired a few weeks earlier. Great. I explained to him that it definately is still covered I just had forgotton to grab the new paperwork. “We have no way to tell” he said as he issued me a ticket. Awesome, now I have to deal with getting that dropped when I get home. This crap irritates me for lots of reasons but I’m not going to complain about it here.

Ice Formation on North Side of the HillAfter getting delayed by the traffic cops we headed on to horseshoe lake. The trail had been cleaned up since we were there a few days ago and it was a much better ride. It’s a good thing because I was tired of bouncing up and down on moguls.

The sun was a lot warmer today. It was just warm enough to melt some of the snow on the south side of the hills. The air was still cold however; that when the water ran down and started to drip it would freeze instantly creating some very neat ice formations.