Muscle Sled Fuels Need for Speed

An ungodly cold had clamped down on the North Woods, the same ungodly cold that visits every winter, unleashing blasts of minus-70-degree wind, cold enough to ice the Land O’ Lakes solid, cold enough to panic TV weather forecasters into histrionic warnings about air-frozen skin. Schools were closed. Airfields were shutting down. Only fools ventured outdoors.

Perfect weather for snowmobilers.

Belching plumes of exhaust and spewing snow mist, thousands of motorized sleds were descending on this resort town, a place better suited for hibernation.

Every January, 30,000 cold weather die-hards gas up their sleds to tour the snowbanks on the Wisconsin side of the Michigan border, race on icy lakes, guzzle liquor and huddle on a grandstand of packed snow to watch snowmobile racers compete for the championship of their insular sport.

It was derby weekend, the celebration of a subculture that has become the North Country’s equivalent of surfing and stock car racing. A single-minded devotion to cold, performance machinery and speed is what sets snowmobilers apart, sending them out each winter into the pastoral countryside--and sometimes killing them there, catapulted into trees, rocks and each other.

Cocooned in layers of exotic padding, they walked stiffly in Eagle River’s polar air like an army of astronauts. They were zipped inside leather and polymer-stuffed jumpsuits with enough insulation to warm attics. They wore helmets outfitted with visors and electric defoggers. Underneath, they were equipped for a picnic in Antarctica: silk underwear, long johns, down jackets, wool stockings and lined gloves. There was cover for every exposed part of the face: neck warmers, earmuffs, mouth masks, nose masks, face masks and balaclavas.

They emerged only indoors. Underneath the layers were local merchants who look to the winter months for their economic salvation. There were the racers, as idolized in parts of the Rust Belt as Indy car drivers are adored farther south. There were the captains of the snowmobile industry, manufacturers who jetted in from Minnesota, Canada and Japan to display their sleds and cheer from heated booths.

And everywhere there were the snowmobile fanatics, mostly middle-class Midwesterners who towed their sleds into Eagle River or drove them hundreds of miles on trails that snake through the snowbound heartland states. They were there to test their machines in lakeside drag bouts and to “warm up” inside the hundreds of taverns strewn through the countryside.

Their obsession has built a $3.2-billion-a-year industry around an ungainly, whining vehicle originally designed to ferry trappers and loggers through snowdrifts. A decade of tweaking by manufacturers has transformed the balky scooter on rickety skis and treads into a monster of the snowpath. Sales are rising 10% a year among affluent families eager for new leisure frontiers and racing wannabes entranced by the sleds’ powerful engines. Sled motors now rival the thunder of Harley-Davidson hogs, capable of 100 mph with lightning acceleration.

“It’s freedom, man,” said Bob Saykelly, 40, a home builder who has raced snowmobiles near here since he was a teenager. “It’s one of the few things left that you can do where you can fool around and not get into trouble for doing it.”

Wisconsin has no speed limit on snowmobiles. But freedom has its perils. A sudden dip in a trail or a lumpy mogul taken at a blinding pace can bounce a 700-pound sled into the air--and a rider along with it. The confluence of snowy terrain, muscle sleds and drivers addled by alcohol in this ice kingdom has become the sport’s lethal downside.

Snowmobile fatalities have become commonplace--93 deaths occurred in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan last winter, two-thirds of the 149 recorded across the nation. Law enforcement crackdowns have grown so ineffective as snow trails have exploded--200,000 miles now span Maine to Washington state--that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is studying the phenomenon, hoping to marshal public opinion to reduce the sport’s hazards.

That is an unlikely prospect in North Country towns, where forest rangers and locals have coexisted warily for decades and where merchants who once closed down for the long winter months now look forward to the December-to-March snowmobile invasion.

“You take the snowmobile out of towns like Eagle River and the economy would just dry up,” said 65-year-old Dick Decker, a flint-eyed former sled racer and now a snowmobile tour operator whose family owns the derby track. “Just about everyone up here either owns a sled or makes their living off them.”

Derby week was a make-or-break moment for them all: the Deckers, local merchants, industry executives and the rangers on night patrol to catch drunk snowmobilers. They all had business to conduct on the coldest weekend of the winter.

A Crash-Fest in the Cold

“It’s almost race-ready!” howled Fred Smith from under the yellow cowling of a Ski-Doo 434 Blizzard.

Clutching a fistful of wrenches, Smith tinkered feverishly with the undercarriage of the 1973 Canadian-made sled, the final preparations for Decker’s first race of the derby weekend--a seven-lap competition against fellow retirees on vintage snowmobiles. The race was on in three minutes, and the Blizzard’s chassis was still loose.

Out on the track, a crash-fest known as the Pro Sno Cross Open was in its final throes. Snowmobiles were hurtling around the glazed ice at 80 mph, roaring up snow mounds and flying past each other in midair. It was classic demolition derby fare: A field of 12 was being winnowed to a few survivors. Sleds cartwheeled out of control, soared into botched landings and collided.

Decker left his office overlooking the track and rode a pickup over to the trailer that housed his sled. Struggling into a racing suit, he frowned as he watched Smith and the pit crew lose their battle against time.

“We’re not going to make it,” he muttered. There was another race that night, but he had work back at the office. Racing would have to wait.

The chance for glory comes less and less these days for Dick Decker. He has been competing ever since snowmobiles first made the leap from utility vehicle to chariot in the early 1960s. To Decker, racing is the primordial impulse inside every snowmobile fanatic, the inner tug goading teenagers to go full-throttle in the darkness on frozen lake beds, the real reason sedentary middle-age people lay out $11,000 for a “touring sled.”

But the unorganized purity of the first amateur races that Decker and his four sons once waged with neighbors on the lakes near Marshfield, Wis., has long been supplanted by the structures and rituals imposed by a maturing industry.

“Used to be you’d just go out on the ice with your friends and see how fast you could push your machine,” Decker said. “That hasn’t changed, but the real action now is at the tracks.”

From northern Minnesota to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, there are eight towns in the pro snowmobile racing circuit. In Eagle River and its rivals, a race weekend brings in tens of thousands of dollars, not only from local hunting lodges and sled dealers, but from national sponsors like Valvoline and Dr. Pepper.

The big four snowmobile makers--Canada’s Ski-Doo, Japan’s Yamaha and Minnesota’s Arctic Cat and Polaris--sent squads of executives to set up shop at the derby track, displaying 1997 muscle sleds inside heated tents, enticing fans who pawed over the machines like Christmas toys.

“I want that,” sighed a race fan who stood transfixed by a new Ski-Doo. His shivering wife tugged at his sleeve.

On derby weekend, snowmobile dealers promoted complete wardrobe lines: $1,000 jumpsuits and $600 insulated jackets were par for the course. Arctic Cat rooters appeared in coats draped in psychedelic checkerboard flags and explosions of lime green. Ski-Doo clients parried with tiger-print orange outfits that seemed vaguely patterned on militia camouflage.

“An Arctic Cat person would never be caught dead in a Ski-Doo jacket. Ugh. There are some things you just don’t do,” Kimberly Dahl explained.

The 30-year-old computer specialist had traveled three days from Fargo, N.D., to cheer on her favorite racer, Guy Useldinger, a part-time farmer whose quest to bring home $14,000 in prize money ended prematurely when his Arctic Cat spun out in clutch races.

Amid these strains of North Country capitalism, the Decker family pursued its own opportunities. Dick Decker and his wife, Audrey (“The meanest rider in the whole family,” Decker whispered), were busy making contacts for their snowmobile tour firm. After 10 years of running the derby track, the couple turned over ownership to their son Chuck, a 1987 derby world champion who still races. Two ex-racer sons, Steve and Mike, design and sell customized sled engines. Another son, Allen, manages a local motel.

After helping trouble-shoot for Chuck most of the weekend, Dick finally got his race. He placed sixth in a field of 12, then limped back to his office with a bum knee. “People just don’t know the toll racing takes on your arms and legs,” he grimaced.

Still, in those first moments as he eased into the sled before the green flag waved, the years melted away. “The thrill never goes,” he said.

A Bit Ahead of His Time

All derby weekend, snowmobiles zipped through Sayner, a hamlet west of Eagle River. Some riders turned as they shot down Main Street, glancing at the Eliason Lumber and Hardware store. At the window, near bags of rock salt, stood a fire-engine red hybrid of dog sled and threshing machine.

It is the first known American-built snowmobile. Its inventor, Carl Eliason, died in 1972 just as the sport was transforming into an industry.

Eliason was a trapper desperate to find a way to get around in the snow. Born with a clubfoot, he was unable to fit into snowshoes. So in the winter of 1924-25, he hammered together a crude motorized sled in his garage, grafting an outboard engine and a Model T Ford radiator to a bicycle drive train and mounting them atop downhill skis.

“Dad saw it strictly as a work machine,” said his son, John. “The lakes were not much of a sporting place back then. Life was pretty hard.”

By rights, the Eliasons should be kings of the derby. But 72 years after Carl Eliason took his first snowmobile ride, his progeny spent their weekend helping customers find putty and ball-peen hammers. “No use crying over the past,” said his grandson, John Eliason Jr.

While the Eliasons bagged nails, Pierre Beaudoin, the 34-year-old president of Ski-Doo, was flying to the derby in a Learjet from his corporate office in Valcourt, Canada. The snowmobile giant that Beaudoin heads is part of Bombardier Inc., a $7.5-billion Canadian industrial behemoth that builds Learjets, New York City subway cars and half of the 250,000 snowmobiles sold last year in the United States and Canada.

Beaudoin is the grandson of Joseph-Armand Bombardier, a Canadian inventor who cobbled together motorized snow vehicles in Valcourt around the time Carl Eliason was gassing up his first snowmobile in Sayner. Bombardier, according to company lore, built a ski-mounted chassis powered by a Ford engine in 1922 and patented a motorized sled by 1938.

While Eliason failed to find investors and ended up selling off his patents in the 1940s, Bombardier expanded, selling his sleds to Canadian logging firms. Unlike Eliason, Bombardier saw the future.

“Grandfather used his own machines to play on the snow,” said Beaudoin, sipping coffee inside the Ski-Doo tent.

In his last years, Eliason showed up at the official dinners that abound on derby week. But the invitations were only honorary, a subtle reminder of lost opportunity.

“I know in the back of his mind, Dad felt he missed the train,” John Eliason Sr. said. “People told him, Carl, you built the damn thing too early. I guess they were right.”

A Winter Jam of Snowmobiles

The paths leading into Eagle River were thick with snowmobiles, so many that trail crossings were becoming sled traffic jams. Caravans 30 and 40 vehicles long idled in the cold, waiting to sputter across to their companions.

“Now I know how they feel in Los Angeles,” groused Jim Jackson. The chemical plant supervisor had hopped on his sled in the south Wisconsin town of Rudolph for the 120-mile trip to the derby. Minutes into the ride, he met 15 sledders heading in the same direction. By the time he reached Eagle River, Jackson had given up on touring around on his own.

“I’d have more fun watching the scenery from a bus,” he said.

Locals have enough sense to stay off the trails on winter weekends. It is the price they pay for living in a year-round resort. Lakeside real estate prices in the area, once a summer haunt for deer hunters and walleye fishermen, have doubled in a decade. Restaurants like the Polecat, a bustling place with stuffed muskies on the walls, once closed down in November. Now they serve fried perch all winter.

“People come up here to get away from city life,” said Saykelly, who lives in the small town of Minocqua. “Well, city life is coming to us.”

Saykelly does well by outsiders, building ranch homes for vacationers and newcomers. But the freedom he cherishes is disappearing. Saykelly has given up bow hunting in the winter, afraid of spearing a passing snowmobiler.

When he hits the trail on his 600-pound Ski-Doo Mach 2, it is usually on weeknights, when only seasoned riders come out. “We’re old,” he admits, “but we ride hard,” taking the curves at 50 mph and opening up to an eye-stinging 100 on icy straightaways.

On a minus-20-degree Thursday night, he rolled into Stinger’s, a bar in the town of Woodruff, with fellow rider Dean Olson, a body shop owner. The two men tossed their leather jumpsuits on a bar stool, ordered beers and moaned about the derby crowds.

“Some of these guys get on the trails and think they’re heroes,” Saykelly said. “They’ll whip around a corner they’re not familiar with and, bam, they’re kissing a tree.”

Olson snorted. “Like you did the other night.”

Saykelly laughed. “I knew where I was going.” He had been lead rider of a band of sledders out in the woods between Boulder Junction and Sayner. “I took this curve a little too fast and ended up plowing into the woods. By the time I got back to you guys, I was back in fourth, eating snow.”

“Price you pay for being on top, bud,” Olson said.

Fueled Up and Flirting With Danger

The boys from Sheboygan had started early. It was not yet noon, but they all had seats at the end of the bar inside Bauer’s Dam Resort, hoisting Wisconsin brews and ragging each other. They had a long day of drinking and sledding ahead of them.

The boys--men, actually, in their 30s and 40s--were itching to get their sleds out on Lake Buckatabon, and when someone mentioned “water skipping,” they threw their money on the bar. They lurched to their sleds, revved up and began roaring over cracks in the lake ice. There is no danger in water skipping as long as your sled is fast, the ice is thick and your luck holds. For the moment, their luck was holding.

The state law against driving a snowmobile under the influence is explicit and expensive. A first offense carries a fine starting at $400. But sledders know well that there simply are not enough police to patrol the thousands of miles of trails that open each year. In Vilas County, where Eagle River is located, there are 800 miles of snow trails, the densest in the state.

In 1988, state Department of Natural Resources agents tried random checkpoints to reduce the legion of drunk sledders on trails. Hundreds were arrested. Soon enough, state Rep. Jim Holperin was fielding angry calls from tavern owners and snowmobile club members. That spring, the Legislature outlawed snowmobile checkpoints.

“There were better ways for them to spend their enforcement time,” said Holperin, who now runs a logging industry school. But the practical effect, DNR Warden Tom Wrasse said, “was that snowmobilers kept on drinking without much worry about us.”

On derby weekend, there were warnings everywhere for sledders to watch what they drank. Some taverns offered specials on hot chocolate and cider.

But for every warning, there was a wink. Bartenders were mixing hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. At Bauer’s Dam, half-pint bottles of root beer schnapps and brandy were “$3.95 to go.”

At the derby track, where “take with” drinking--in North Country vernacular--got so unruly several years ago that the Deckers had to ban all outside liquor, there was only beer available. Yet even as minus-70-degree wind bursts lashed the hard-core fans, shivering sledders would not give up their libation.

A group of crazies from Lincoln County, Wis., tried to gulp down their beer before it froze in the cans. Brian Kingsley, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy, managed to finish one can, but beer drops froze on his mustache. Noticing the lager icicles, he carefully snapped them off and ate them. “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” he said.

The end result of drinking and sledding shows up in Vilas County emergency rooms. At the Marshfield Clinic in Minocqua, Dr. Thomas Gabert watches glumly week after winter week as sledders are brought in stunned and bloodied. He grew so incensed after a 9-year-old girl was killed in a snowmobile accident four years ago that he began researching the case of every arriving sled victim.

From 1990 to 1992, Gabert’s hospital system recorded 350 snowmobile accidents and eight deaths. Doctors were unable to learn the percentage of victims who had been drinking because of confidentiality. But recent Wisconsin state studies of snowmobile fatality victims indicate that 52% were legally intoxicated and 18% more were under the influence.

“I’m afraid our drinking traditions are carrying into everything we do,” he said.

Gabert’s study is a variation on research that CDC physicians have conducted in recent years in several New England states. In a report issued last month, Maine CDC physician Ned Hayes blamed his state’s rising snowmobile deaths on “excessive speed and drinking.”

Wisconsin DNR arrest reports as of late last year showed alcohol playing a role in at least 50% of sled accidents. But this year’s totals are worse, Wrasse said. Statewide snowmobile fatalities are running ahead of last year’s total of 22. And the percentage of alcohol-involved accident cases has soared to 70%.

“All we’ve got is our finger in the dike,” Wrasse said.

On a frigid Friday night, Wrasse and his fellow officials drove into the Wisconsin boondocks, patrolling near trails for tipsy snowmobilers. Unable to stop sledders without probable cause, they were looking for missing or out-of-date registration stickers, anything to make a stop.

They soon found them. On a dark country lane north of Eagle River, Wrasse pulled up to a lattice of headlights. His agents had stopped a convoy of snowmobilers making an illegal turn onto a highway while heading home from a backwoods strip joint. As they administered breath tests, a state trooper pulled up. Behind him were two more sledders, nabbed for an illegal highway ride.

They were two of the boys from Sheboygan, deep-fried after a long day of touring and drinking. Pouting, they exhaled into the test tubes. The authorities emptied the men’s pockets and locked on manacles.

“This guy is .11 and his buddy down there is .16,” Wrasse said. “They’ll spend the night in jail sobering up and they’ll pay nice, stiff fines. And if we’re lucky, they’ll think twice before they have one for the road.”

Times researcher John Beckham in Chicago contributed to this story.