Snow Blasters

Dec. 6, 2006

SnoCross. You’ve heard of it, right? It’s like motorcross, only with 450-pound snowmobiles. Men—and even women—dress in body armor and blast around a roughly oval track about a half mile long. For the ultimate adrenaline rush, they fly their machines off jumps for distances of up to 100 feet. Big drawback to the sport: it’s too freakin’ cold for people to watch for very long so there’s not a ton of
fan action.
Bob LaMontagne and his racing team want to make SnoCross as common up north as bowling. Fat chance. But they welcome adrenaline junkies to their races and they’ll show you how it’s done. They’ll bend over backwards to help you get involved. Only thing is, they can’t give you what you really need, and that would be guts.
The strategy in SnoCross racing is to immediately grab the lead or what’s called the “holeshot.” Even if your lead is only six inches, you’ve gained the edge for the race. That’s because the track narrows like a funnel at the first turn, forcing the rest of the pack to wait in line like they would an elevator.
The four men—all handsome dudes from Traverse City—make up the team called Boss Crank Racing. Tom White and Bob LaMontagne started out mountain bike racing in the 1990s and wanted to progress to something more deafening, uh, exciting. In 2003, White, Brian Allen and Dan Gray started SnoCross racing and added LaMontagne the next season. The four buddies have been a team ever since.
The men are clearly breaking new trail on the sport. In 2003, they each bought a machine and trailered them to their first race in Searchmont, Canada, with absolutely no idea what they were doing. They didn’t know where to park, where to register, and most importantly, they had no earthly idea how to ride a 450-pound machine off a jump.
“When we saw the track, we almost crapped our pants,” White said.
In an interview at the Northern Express office, White, Gray and Allen are clearly amused by their pictures at that first race. They are practically sitting down in the jump, a huge no-no. The proper way to pilot a snowmobile 20 feet into the air is to jump with the machine as if you yourself are jumping into the air. You loosely hold the handlebars, letting the handlebars gently rise up to your hands, and keep your eye on the spot you want to land. Then you gently balance the bike using the brake and gas, and during the descent, aim your machine at the same angle as the hill you’re landing on.
Allen, the youngest in the group, said he understands what he’s supposed to do, but hasn’t fully mustered the trust he needs to float with the machine.
The speeds around the roughly oval track range from 5 mph around a tight curve to 40 mph on a straightaway—really much slower than trail riders who can top over 100 mph.
The key is smoothness, said LaMontagne, who also teaches high performance driving in the summer.
“The smoother you drive, the calmer you are in your head, the more you win,” he said.
Now interestingly, all of these men have jobs and very, very supportive wives and girlfriends, but no children. Perhaps--and they freely admit this--it’s because they never quite grew up themselves. Who has time for children, after all, when the next 15 out of 18 weekends of winter weather are scheduled with SnoCross practices and events?
As evidence of their delayed maturity, they spent much of 2003 and 2004 building a practice track in an Acme field, once an old cherry orchard. It formerly did service as a world-class BMX track when racer Tom White was much younger. But he allegedly grew up only to become obsessed with building a SnoCross track.
“Our first step was to pile old logs, firewood and brush on the track. Next, we brought in woodchips by the boatload to cover the logs and brush. The result is a jump surface that remains soft even when frozen to emulate a track surface that is 100 percent snow and tilled with a groomer, which is the surface we race on,” he wrote in an email, describing the painstaking effort they took.
The team planted grass on the rest of the track, and each fall they mow it so less snow is required, just like the ski resorts do. Once it snows, they take snowblowers to blow snow from the track edges to the middle.
“We can turn a 4-inch snowfall into a foot of finely granulated track snow within four hours,” White wrote. “… Shaping a jump is a delicate process, maybe not like making an ice carving, but small movements with a rake and shovel yield a much better result than heavy equipment.”
White said he first had to sell his dad, who owns the property, on the idea of using it for SnoCross.
“He has zero interest in motor sports but allows me to desecrate his beautiful oasis with 60-foot doubles and triples. I gotta love him.”
A double and triple, by the way, are a series of two or three jumps placed close enough together so a rider clears them in a single jump. The local guys can clear up to 65 feet, while pros can shoot as far as 110 feet.
The practice track is one of the very few in the country and has attracted pros from around the country, including 17-year-old Zach Pattyn who competed in ESPN’s Winter X games—the creme de la creme of the SnoCross competitions.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing things to come out of the interview with the team is that alcohol is not part of the SnoCross culture. Racers are cold sober when they ride, and drink very minimally even after the events. In fact, it was the deadly mix of alcohol and rocket-like speeds on snowmobile trails that prompted LaMontagne to get into SnoCross.
The last time LaMontagne was on a trail, he hit a snowplow blade buried in the snow and wrecked his sled. “I thought, ‘Alright, this trail riding is unsafe, it’s just not the thrill that racing would give me,’ and I was correct.
“When I tell people that I think SnoCross is safer, they look at me, ‘You are so high.’ But when we crash, we walk away from the hospital. When you crash on the trails, you don’t walk away—you create widows. That wasn’t my cup of tea.”
Which brings up the question: Have any of the men had any face to metal contact with studs, the razor-sharp thingies that stick out of the bottom of the snowmobile track for traction.?
The answer: no stud damage. But Dan Gray said he suffered a terrible ankle injury last winter after a snowmobile came up behind him, forced a wipe-out, and then landed on him.
“I’m still recovering, actually,” said Gray, who owns his own engineering business, Gray Matter.
White, who works at Grand Traverse Plastics, broke the side of his hand after landing what he thought was a perfect jump. He still doesn’t quite know how it happened.
LaMontagne, who recently retired from Sound Room, which he founded 18 years ago, blew out his collarbone in 2003, and Allen, an IT guy for Gourdie Fraser, remains undamaged.
To minimize the injuries and enhance their performance, they all exercise … a lot.
“I lift weights, do cross training, muscle training, twitch muscle training--those little groups of muscles that allow you to jump up a flight of stairs, the instant click, instant response you need when someone suddenly throws a ball at you,” said LaMontagne.
“For the twitch muscles, I juggle and I race slot cars. I don’t use video games, although some people do. I’ll do push ups, and clap my hands, jumping jacks, skipping. It all sharpens your reaction time.”
The men, whose ages range from 27 to 41, compete in different age and professional classes, and have performed very well regionally—well enough to attract sponsors, including Traverse Bay Marine and several national sponsors.
It’s a good thing, too. The sport is expensive at this level, requiring new snowmobiles each year at a cost of $9,000 (they sell their used ones to beginners), snowmobiles parts and a heated trailer to haul everything around and hang out in.
Only a select number of people can afford the expense (about $3,500 per year) and learning the ropes can be a little daunting. That’s why the team welcomes anyone with an interest to come to their pit during competitions or to send them an email.
If you’re interested in watching SnoCross, check out the X Games qualifier on December 15th at the Otsego Club in Gaylord between 8:30 and 4:30 (closes down at noon for lunch). Or watch the team at the Gaylord Fairgrounds on December 30 and 31.

For more information, email Tom White at TWhite@grand-t.com or Bob LaMontagne at bobandconnie@charter.net.