Sledneck King of the Hill

In some circles, the Mint 400 is a far far better thing than the Superbowl, the Kentucky Derby, and the lower Oakland roller derby finals all rolled into one. - HST, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS

*

The uphill racetrack is that dirty zigzag under the lift

I've never been to the Mint 400. Hell the Mint Hotel isn't even around anymore, an atavistic shrine to Old Vegas torn down when the town went all Disney. But I can imagine what the scene was like - a hodge podge orgy of leather-wearing machine-loving honkies hooting and hollering as they defied nature and health to power crotch rockets across barren ungroomed terrain.

I can imagine it because if nothing else, no doubt Jackson Hole Hill Climb Weekend would go hand in hand with the Mint 400. Hell, I'd wager a few of the old-timers competed in the damn thing.

The 38th Annual World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb is organized by the Jackson Hole Snow Devils and a devilish course does the damn thing present. Slednecks from all over the country and the great north converge on the small town hill of Snow King to pilot their heavy sleds up to the top, at the finish piloting up 30 degree pitches and praying the damn thing doesn't somersault back on them. And for those who make it, the powers that be line them up to see who did it the fastest. Madness.

The madness began Thursday. I live 2 blocks from Snow King and slowly saw my street transformed to a haven for RV's and buses and pick-ups hauling heavy machinery and rowdy metalheads. I rode a lift up the hill just above the course as the first round of eliminations commenced including a straight uphill high-speed burn to just where it started getting precipitous, high-powered machinery racing uphill below my dangling board. Even without including the top super-steep I saw one guy's slep flip over just as he got to a cat track. As he went to right it, two more racers appeared, throttling it like a shotgun up the hill and it was only due to a last-minute swerve from the person in second place that the man whose machine flipped survived. Tommy or Joey or somebody won the race, a straight high-speed burn up to the top cat track. I played king of the hill as a young boy. It taught you conquest, speed, muscling. Taught a man the American way. So it was that I watched in amazement as these bastards played it on quarter-ton buzzing sleds. At 4 some garbled announcements were announced and the day 1 Pro Only Dash For Cash was finished. The Hill Climb had officially begun.

*

8 long years ago I was a young snowboarder punk freshly graduated from college, living over by the high school and the middle school and every morning as I waited for the bus to Teton Village I'd stare blankly at the cow pasture across the street.

In those days I rarely went to town except maybe to visit the Shady Lady or the Rancher or other bars of ill-repute. Most of my life was a series of laps between my home and the Village with the occasional trip to the pass to hit backcountry kickers. I was still blessed with the immortality of youth. I remember Hill Climb weekend as something that happened around me, satellite from me but it had no direct effect. Except, of course, that there was good cocaine in town, brought by 4-stroke animals looking to go up. It's no secret that the motor toys world loves its uppers. The Hell's Angels brought speed to San Francisco to end the summer of love and were the first mass distributors of meth in America. They were also the only gabachos the Mexicans trusted to spread their coke and meth in America, if only because they were as addicted to the sweet supply as they were fearless in the face of the law. No doubt had the nation been snowier there would have been an all-snowmobile gang of Hells' Angels who would prowl the high alpine on ancient sleds looking for drug-fueled snow cave orgies with their Mamas.

As such, my main memory of that Hill Climb is the streets buzzing with blue and red lights breaking up fights in front of all the Town Square hot spots, packed rowdy bars, and hanging out in the editing bay of a local ski video company firing down lines of pure white with co-workers.

"Here's a couple Steamboat moguls for you," the man had said, drawing out 4 perfect dinger mounds amidst thousands of dollars of editing equipment and I hoovered them down before going off into whatever mayhem I used to call nightlife back then, in the waning years of youth, when late nights didn't preclude early mornings. 

*

The only white powder I enjoy now piles deep on steep mountainsides and makes a man feel the closest to flying he can without contraptions or wing suits. 

But Hill Climb is a big deal and, living only 2 blocks away, it must be indulged. Such found my neighbor driving me to the Village to pick up some chocolates to twist the day and night around noon. Misty clouds hid the Grand and the Middle Teton with the South sticking out like the bow of some majestic granite ship. The chutes and gullys of the southside of Mt. Hunt stood enshrined by sunlight, the only white lines I craved any more, and JHMR was sun-bathed and alive and I pointed out to my neighbor Ship's Prow just off Rock Springs, where I'd ridden the day before. Then we were back home where I sluiced a stiff pour of whiskey into my coffee and my wife showed me how to properly use rolling papers.

Jared, a buddy of mine, not his real name, no real names here, arrived around 2 with a 30-pack of Coors Light, his cheery girlfriend in tow and as she and my wife set to discussing whatever it is women discuss he and I discussed free agency and the draft and lines I had yet to ride and climbs we had yet to attack, passing around a joint. The neighbor Joe came over with beers as Jared and I drank sidecars and sat on my stoop, staring at the top of the course where we could see people lined up as the whir of snowmobiles filled the air for miles around.

Then we were off to the event. Big loud machines and waving banners proclaiming Polaris and Klim and burly men in heavy black jackets is the only way to describe the scene we walked through on the border, where Cache passes the reinvention of 43 North as the new bougie bar and restaurant "Lift". A young boy covered up by sponsor gear and a big helmet roared down the melted street by us on his sled without regard for the treads of his machine. A large man with a heavy jacket like a king's fur supported by small legs waddled past. Trailers lined all adjacent streets and revelers were already drunk above us on the top of the bar so we dipped into a house on the corner. As Jared and his girlfriend discussed how they'd both partied at this house before in previous Jacksonian iterations I broke out half a chocolate bar. Jared and I split it clandestinely and circled around the entrance festival.

The festival itself is a tent village selling all imaginable motor-based paraphernalia amidst beer stands and autograph tables. I'd stared at a massive machine, a 4-wheeler dune buggy with triangle tracks replacing the back wheels and skis tucked under the front. 

The tent village taking up what had been the snowtubing park cost 15 bucks to enter so we walked around the block, beers tucked in our pockets, opened brews in our hands as we skirted police SUV's to the entrance to Snow King itself. Joe had told me the night before in the square it was chaos, packed streets and flashing cop lights. I'd read that they hired help from officers all over Wyoming to keep the peace. When gasoline and uppers-powered slednecks come together in the largest such rally violence and aggression and heavy boozing is undoubtedly to follow.

We walked through the lobby of the Town Hill and posted up at the picnic benches just above the Cougar Lift where we had a perfect view of the zig-zagging track to the top. As the chocolate kicked in I stared incredulous at the sleds flying up, over the lower kicker and into the higher section where angle defeats raw power and from there they have to finesse it up the last section to the top. 

Jared told me that in the big powder winters sometimes only 2 people will actually make over the crest but while watching we saw at least 4 push beyond and maybe more. It could only be surmised by the cheers from the lines of black figures up the hill whether somebody was successful. 

I nodded at the dry winter we'd had and stared at the tent village behind which Glory Bowl was just beginning to peak out of the high mountain snow clouds.

*

The Hill Climb is competition bordering on chaos. The whole thing was founded in 1975 by the Jackson Snow Devils. Back then it was just 20 good ol' boys high-lining up a steep ski hill for town bragging rights. Like all other great and weird things it grew from there. Now it draws over 10,000 fans and 300 snowmobile racers from all over the US and Canada.

*

The last great cheer erupted and we were greeted by the view of hundreds of black specks glissading down Snow King. It had wound down for the day, at least on the hill. That night there would be madness in all the town bars, cops handing out tickets and making arrests - over the weekend 38 people wound up in Teton County jail. One 19-year-old was taken to the hospital after passing out in the back of a cop car after an arrest for underage drinking. 

“I'd call it a typical hill climb weekend," said Lt. Cole Nethercott of the Jackson Police Department. Nethercott's agency accounted for 18 of the arrests, down slightly from last year's 19. The event typically results in a spike in the weekend jail population.(sourced from JH News & Guide). 

Most of the arrests were for DUI, though there was 1 domestic.

*

The excitement pushed us hard into our own drinking, back at the house, myself leading the charge. I also ate some more chocolate and quickly the day devolved into strobe lights. Visions of shots of fine Wyoming Whiskey. At one point we began building a bonfire cache with the goal of a grand bonfire later that evening in my yard but after our weak, drunken swings of the axe lost steam - because drunkenness should always be met by swinging and flinging axes - we abandoned the idea. A vision of punching my fence though I couldn't remember why. Then I was coming out of the black with THE BIG LEBOWSKI playing. The wife had put it on to return me to sanity. I'd lost my mind from all the ups and downs and sideways' mixing that I hadn't played with in a long while, chugging Evan Williams straight from the bottle in an angry bid to stave off the demons.

*

The next day greeted me with a swollen knuckle, a wicked hangover, a square crate 3/4 full of freshly-split wood, and a frozen mountain of Coors sitting on my front deck with a half-smoked cigar in its washy lake. Frost-brewed, tap the Tetons and so on. Jared and his girl had left around 9, I heard. Joe had gone to sneak into the music and snowmobile freestyle rally being held in the Rodeo Grounds behind our house. The whines of the final day of snowmachine races could be hear through the day and I watched from my front door to see if and who would summit.

Aside from all the debauchery and roughneck crowd, the Hill Climb World Championships is an athletic - athletic? - spectacle all men should experience at one point in his life. Or in fact BECAUSE of debauchery and the crowd, no doubt. It's another example of how we find more and more ways to expand the world of professional competition beyond the increasingly staid ball and field games that so dominated the last century of American competitive entertainment. And like the BANFF Mountain Film Festival or Travis Rice's SUPERNATURAL or the Mt. Baker Banked Slalom or the Sturgis Bike Rally,there's something to be said for ambitious endeavors that are firmly rooted in the simple act of a couple friends getting together to compete and showcase their lifestyles far outside the mainstream. Even more, in these particular examples there's an appreciation for the frontier, for men living far off the beaten paths who celebrate these lives in the high alpine, the last great American wide open filled with characters and sports and activities most of the low-landers and city-dweller will never be able to fathom.

Their histories are short and as such their grassroots natures and continual evolution make these events ones to watch. Football and baseball and soccer and hockey and all the traditional sports and conventions are still king, no doubt. But these new worlds and events are still in their infant stages, just like America in the grand scheme of nations is still in its toddlerhood. As such, you owe it to yourselves as Americans to partake in such small, growing events. Watching as they expand, partaking in the experiment before civilization jumps in and ruins it. In a way it's like how, looking back on our recent history, we can watch piles of steel and stone grow up into our great urban monoliths.

And all along, of course, remember to embrace the one thing that ties all of these grand experiments in competition and celebration and nation-building together - the age-old tradition of getting weird.

- Matt the Wanderer