Looked exciting. Video starts beginning of the lift.
https://youtu.be/0BXV1uJKrOo?t=800

I scrolled the video back to find the part where the guy lost it into the creek hole. That starts at 9 minutes 15 seconds. It's pretty entertaining from there too.

So many questions. Got worried we were gonna see a disaster there.

I never met a snow machine I liked well enough to spend that kinda money to retrieve it......

My definition of "snowmobile": Way to make winter colder.

Spent too much time on them in Upper Yukon to actually like them.

MTV

Ride snowmobiles at work, riding them for fun seems like an unnatural act. 3 years ago we got 2 of them extremely stuck in the Owyhee mountains, sun going down, my sidekick had an asthma attack, and things looked bad. We got flown off the hill by a Blackhawk and came back for the snowmobiles 2 months later.

Snowmobiling, the early days. Sorry for the thread drift, however, there is a helicopter involved at the end.

Ravens Roost
Ski Dooing Generator Fuel for the Army

In May of 1971 the army was conducting war games on the Yakima Firing center. They slung an air portable radio shack up to Ravens Roost with a Chinook to relay communications between Yakima and Fort Lewis. It took 50 gallons of diesel fuel per day to run the generators.

The mountains were socked in with fog for about a week and the helicopter couldn’t get in to resupply the fuel. The army called the Naches Ranger Station and asked if they had someone that could help them get some fuel up to Ravens Roost. I was picked for the task.

They showed up about 2:00 in the afternoon. There was a sergeant and a Colonel. The Sergeant was driving a deuce and a half loaded with the fuel in 5 gallon Jerry cans and a Massey Ferguson Ski Whiz they had rented in Yakima. The Colonel was driving a triumph TR3. Neither had any experience with snowmobiles. I had a two wheel drive pickup with a 1970 399 Ski Doo twin track (hog track) and a fold-a-sled.

I figured the Colonel would park the TR3 and ride up in the deuce and a half but he drove his sports car. About 4 miles up the Ravens Roost road we hit the first snow bank. Sarge broke through it good enough that I could get my two wheel drive pick up through then the Colonel hit it about 60 and slid on through in his TR3. This...Sarge busting snow banks and I in my pickup, then the Colonel in his TR3 following continued a couple more miles until we came to a snow bank about 10 feet deep that Sarge couldn’t bust through. It was May so the snow was really soft that late in the day.

We parked there and unloaded. I pulled the fold-A sled full of Jerry cans with the hog track, the Colonel rode the Ski Whiz, and Sarge rode on back of the sled dog sled style. There were patches of bare ground anywhere from 100 yards to a quarter mile long between the snow banks now. I came off one of the snow banks going pretty fast. When the sled hit the bare gravel road the hitch pin on the sled broke. Sarge did a superman over the sled and landed head first about 10 feet in front of the sled. His forehead was cut pretty bad.

I tried to talk those two out of continuing but they wouldn’t hear of it. We bandaged Sarge's head up and continued. I was in the lead. Just above Huckleberry campground where the road always gets drifted in I took the underground power line road that goes straight up the ridge to the peak. It had some pretty big drifts. After busting a couple of those with the hog track and Sarge hanging on to the sled for all he was worth...and that was a Lot...I stopped. The Colonel was having trouble staying on the ridge and getting over the drifts with the Ski Whiz too.

I unhooked the sled and put one five gallon Jerry can on each side of the hog track in front of my feet. I told them to wait there and I would shuttle the cans up to the top two at a time. That worked beautiful but on about the 4th trip back to the stopping spot I bumped the sled with the hog track and it turned sideways and headed off the north side of that ridge. It was a steep open slope for about a quarter mile then solid timber at the bottom. The sled disappeared into the timber. There was still four full Jerry cans on the sled.

I told Sarge and the Colonel to not worry about the sled and to not even try to go down to check on it. I Took Two of the last four Jerry cans that weren’t on the sled up to the radio shack on top of the peak. When I got back to the stopping spot Sarge was there waiting but the Colonel wasn’t. I asked where he was and Sarge said “Down there looking for the sled”. After a bit the Colonel came out of the trees at the bottom of the slope. He was pulling the sled. He hollered , “The sleds okay. It hit a tree and blew the bottoms out of the Gerry cans”.

About the time the Colonel made it up to the ridge a Kiowa helicopter (Military Jet Ranger) buzzed us.They circled back and landed. The Pilot motioned me over to the helicopter. He said the top of the peak was clear now. I gave him the last two fuel cans to shuttle up to the top.

So there you have it. If anyone ever finds or hears about the Gerry cans with the bottoms blown out at the bottom of the slope just above Huckleberry camp ground you know how they got there.

Great story. I started laughing at "The Colonel was driving a triumph TR3."

The amount of money some of those guys have into their sleds is more then a lot of us have tied up into our airplanes. The recovery is pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things for them.
I enjoy a good day of riding in the mountains, but I'm pretty tame nowadays. Having been in an avalanche and having had friends killed in them, and having a wife and kids that I enjoy coming home to now tend to calm a guy down. Same with flying, I want to enjoy it and come home, so its tamed me down a bit. I don't have anything to prove anymore.