Some forecasts are predicting a return of winter this season. I hope they are right.
If it was going to return we'd have seen it already. All I'm seeing in the forecast is more warm weather. We're almost into December and still seeing highs in the 7-9 degree range.
I'm holding out hope for another riding winter, but I wouldn't be holding out hope for a sledding season if I still had one.
Sledding doesn't have to be expensive. I have a 1980 Kawasaki 440 Invader. Paid $1500 for it about 10 years ago. Sure it's vintage and won't run with the real big dogs but my buddy also has old Kawis so no problem. It's been ridiculously reliable.
If I got back into it, which I'll probably never do ever again, I'd buy something old and depreciated as well. I couldn't fathom having $20+K into a couple of modern machines for a few rides a year.
My family used to be really big into snowmobiling, it was my dads passion. My earliest memories of sledding are sticking rags over the carb throats of old 60's yellow Ski-Doo's in the boathouse at the cottage choking them trying to get them started. Then through the 80's, all sorts of different machines.
Lots of great memories. That's me in the maroon jacket of the back of the trappers sled, probably dad taking the photo.
This would have been somewhere around the mid 80's at our cottage on Scugog. Dad had all sorts or riding buddies who would come out to our place to start a big day ride somewhere.
This machine below was dads pride and joy in the 80's and 90's, bought it brand new off the dealers floor in Port Perry in 1986. When we stopped riding in the late 90's it went into my garage here at home and sat for 20+ years. Dad passed away in 2011.
This was the day in early 2023 when I finally pulled it out and uncovered it for the first time since around 2001. A few here may recognize it, but suffice to say it's a pretty rare sled now.
Last trail pass on it was 1997 and looking back through some photos the last time it was on snow was January 1999.
I had been keeping it for sentimental value, and probably also some misguided plan to get it back on the snow some day, but it would have needed an epic amount of work to ever make that happen. With the fact that winters were getting more and more rare, and no time to dedicate to putting it on a trailer and going 500+km north for a days riding, well, I finally came to the realization that it was time to let it go.
Thankfully I found a sled collector who desperately wanted it for a restoration. He came all the way from Alaska for that matter. I felt good knowing it was going to someone who wanted it for what it was (a rare collectors sled now) with the goal of restoring it to running condition versus some kid who would have turned it into a ditchbanger or something.
So in May of 2023, it went into his trailer, and went off into the sunset. Sadly I have never heard from the guy since aside from a single photo showing it on the floor of his garage in AK a few weeks later - not sure if he found it to be more of a project than he expected, or something happened, but I guess it is what it is at this point. I know my dad is keeping an eye on it, whatever happened.
