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PrintRevved Up … and Up and Up
World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb brings a different sort of energy to town.
A World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb competitor challenges the steep upper sections of the course.
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One weekend a year, the noise resounding from the slopes of Snow King Mountain sounds like the inside of a nest filled with angry yellow jackets. The smell of exhaust and cigarette smoke stings through the cold, making your eyes water. The street in front of the mountain is closed off and streams of people in Carhartts, hardy padded leather jackets, and trucker hats stop to ogle new snowmobile technology at booths draped in T-shirts and banners declaring the superiority of Polaris—or Arctic Cat or Ski-Doo. Bud Light cans far outnumber bottles of Fat Tire. Cabela’s outerwear replaces the Cloudveil more commonly seen among the ski crowd in Jackson Hole.
On that weekend in late March, Snow King transforms from a ski resort into a mecca for the snowmobile crowd. It’s loud and crazy, full of people drinking beer and placing dollar bets on which brand of snow machine will win the competition this
year. On that weekend only, snowmobile drivers are allowed to power their expensive machines up the 1,500-vertical-foot slope, clenching their butt cheeks and praying they can make the rocky, forty-five-degree incline to the top without crashing. Amateur snowmobilers race to show each other, the world, and themselves that they have the cajones to even try it, while professional riders vie for the King/Queen of the Hill title in the World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb.
This winter’s Hill Climb marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the event, hosted by the Jackson Hole Snow Devils snowmobile club. The event draws arguably the gutsiest snowmobilers in the world. Perhaps even more impressive than the racers, though, are the approximately 10,000 enthusiasts and supporters who descend upon Jackson that weekend and more than double the town’s population.
The influx of people makes Hill Climb weekend the single busiest Saturday and Sunday of the year for a lot of Jackson businesses. Places like the Gun Barrel Steak & Game House, the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, and The Virginian count on income from these crowds to carry them into their spring off-season. The hotels and motels in the valley, especially those in town, are stuffed to capacity.
“It seems like it grows every year,” Snow Devils president Heidi Tobin says of the crowd. “They come to see the technology and the power. They come for a good time.”
Venders and snow machine manufacturers set up booths to show off their newest technology and talk about what’s coming up in the snowmobile world. Riders can also race in a division for modified sleds, where spectators get a look at what they might be able to do to their machines at home to make them even stronger, faster, and more aggressive.
Shawn King, owner of Action Sports in Jackson, more or less takes his Polaris shop apart and reassembles it at the side of Snow King Avenue during Hill Climb. It’s a brisk weekend for business, so he doesn’t have the chance to enjoy many of the festivities during the day.
“I mostly enjoy Hill Climb after it’s over each day,” King says.
Loyalties to brands run deep in the snowmachine world, and loyalists tend to stick together. There are several sled brands, but the top three, the ones that command the most allegiance, are Polaris, Arctic Cat, and Ski-Doo. The Polaris crowd makes a pretty strong showing at the Virginian Bar, says King, who grew up in Jackson riding Polaris machines.
“They’re the most American-made sled there is,” says King’s friend Matt Binon, also a Polaris man. The two have friends who ride other brands, but not many, they say. The rivalry between brands is all in good fun, Binon says, adding that he enjoys the banter. A T-shirt at last year’s Hill Climb that caught his attention and made him laugh featured a big, black-and-yellow Ski-Doo beckoning, “Here kitty, kitty,” to a green-and-black Arctic Cat machine, and looking ready to devour it.
Binon and King are part of a group of ten or so local snowmobilers who do the amateur race every year. They have their own personal competition within the official Hill Climb, called the “tutu race.” The slowest racer from the year before has to wear a little pink tutu in the current year’s competition. They also put five dollars each into a pool to provide a cash prize for the fastest rider.
“But it’s mostly just about being faster than the slowest guy,” says Binon, who raced last year in a full leg cast. He’d broken his leg earlier in the year snowmobiling in a freestyle event.
“I don’t think my doctor was too happy,” he says. “But you can’t just sit there and watch all day. You’ve gotta get up there.”
