Hello Duane, what is your snow depth in the winter and do you have to do anything special to deal with it?
Cletis
He is off the line for a bit since he is in town, but the snow varies from year to year, sometime a foot or two, sometimes seven or eight feet.
He has two wide track Arctic Cat Bearcats, same as the one I have and they are well suited for working in deep snow. To make them even better, we install wide ski skins on the skis that make them about four to six inches wider, which translates into better floating on the deep snow.
The wide track machines are normally built a bit heavier for hauling freight, and aren't much for a racing version, although the newer ones have over double the horse power these do, at about 130+- HP, mine has 57 and I can pull a house, so no idea why all the extra HP other than going faster than I care to fall off of it at...
In my case, I had to haul my building material only forty miles one way verses the one hundred miles that Duane has, but the logistics are the same, you break down, you have a long walk ahead of you... Duane's place is sixty miles past my cabin and he makes it normally in a one day ride if weather is helping out. When I was hauling my building supplies out, I would do a round a day which was still only 80 miles verses his 100 one way.
But here is some photos of my snowmachine (same as Duane's, but a year newer '05), it is a four stroke gas engine, and can get up to about 20 MPG on good trails, which is almost double or better over the two stoke engines. And when you have to haul the gas you use, the better the mileage, the farther you can go with less weight to haul other than the freight.
