Quintin Raasch's snowmobile bucks like an unbroken stallion, its nose and skis leaping out of the deep snow on a steep mountain slope. Snow flies as the deep paddles on the snowmobile's track thrash the powder.
Mr. Raasch cracks the throttle, and his machine wails like a chainsaw, lunging forward into a brief moment of flight before landing back on level ground.
The whole landscape-churning routine has taken only a few seconds and, to an experienced rider, is hardly remarkable. In the hands of an expert, a modern snowmobile is the most pliant of dance partners, a technologically endowed beast capable of speedboat-like turns in deep powder and climbs up slopes heart-stoppingly near vertical.
But to the uninitiated, those whose attention may have been drawn to the sport when two snowmobilers died in an avalanche at a competition on British Columbia's Boulder Mountain last Saturday, it is a revelation of the extraordinary power that can be wrung from a modern snowmobile. Consider this: Last September, the Lamtrac/G-Force 1 snowmobile set a speed record on land of 203.3 mph (327.17 km/h).
There is little doubt that the extraordinary changes in the design of high-performance snowmobiles has allowed enthusiasts to accomplish feats - and flirt with a level of danger - never before possible. But the sport has drawn a growing number of adherents. British Columbia alone counts some 130,000 back-country snowmobilers, and for those like Mr. Raasch, thumbing the throttle has become the equivalent of a direct adrenalin injection.
Mr. Raasch hadn't expected to fall in love with back-country riding. In fact, he moved to Revelstoke to ski. Snowmobiles were just a convenient way to reach untouched runs in a place that can receive 20 metres of snow in a year.
Soon, he says, "I stopped bringing my skis and started just sledding."
He was smitten.
On any given winter day in Revelstoke, dozens - often hundreds, sometimes thousands - of riders like him are inhaling a broad expanse of snow-covered playground. Cornices line ridge tops. Flat alpine areas give way to narrow chutes and perilous cliffs. On powder days, when the sky clears, it's hard to picture prettier country.
The allure, say snowmobilers, is the "total freedom" to explore that landscape.
The backcountry is a haven for the rule-averse. Even groomed trails don't have speed limits. There are no requirements to ride here save the $20 it costs to buy a daily trail pass, no questions asked about either competency or preparation.
"You can't explain the feeling," says Jonas Angman, who with four friends has flown in from Sweden, each paying $7,000 to come and ride for nine days.
"It's better than snowboarding, because can go up and you can go down. You can go everywhere. You can just point at the mountain you want to go to and then you just go there," Mr. Angman says. "It's sick. There's no other vehicle that can take you to these places."
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Listen to Mark Hoffman describe the snowmobiles he builds down in Clyde Park, Montana, and you'd think he was talking about an F-1 race car. Everything is carbon fibre this and turbo-charged that.
"Some of our CMX turbo rockets are over 300 horsepower," says Mr. Hoffman, owner of Crazy Mountain Motorsports Inc.
"These machines can do 100 miles an hour [160 kilometres]really easy and very quickly. They're not for everybody, I understand that," he says. "Some people like to drive a Prius. But some people want a Lamborghini and that's what we can give them."
If snowmobilers today have turned a passion into an extreme sport, it is largely because of the efforts of Mr. Hoffman and other snowmobile makers like him, who are giving their customers more power than they've ever had before.
Mr. Hoffman concedes that the growing popularity of turbo-charged sleds has likely contributed to the rising interest in extreme snowmobiling activities such as high-marking, a test of skill and machine that involves attempting to ascend as far as possible up steep slopes. It was snowmobilers doing exactly that who are being blamed for setting off the fatal avalanche a week ago.
"The people buying our sleds are what we call 'power-craving adrenalin junkies,'" Mr. Hoffman says. "Some machines are like dragsters. It's an ego thing. People want to have the baddest sled in the land. It's kind of like having the fastest car, the fastest motorcycle, the fastest whatever.
"And when you get into things like high-marking, it's basically drag racing up a mountain."
Turbochargers, which help produce the much-vaunted boost, have been around for decades. But only in the past decade have they become common on snowmobiles available at your local dealership.
And if that isn't enough juice, some snowmobiles being built today are fed nitrous oxide. This increases the percentage of oxygen the engine receives, allowing more fuel to be burned, resulting in higher torque and power. In a decade, builders like Mr. Hoffman have boosted snowmobiles' output by 100 horsepower, for a cost that any young Alberta oil worker can manage. He sells a basic model for $10,000, while turbo-powered sleds can run more than $30,000.
"Most people would be scared to death to pull the trigger on a machine with that much horsepower," Mr. Hoffman says. "And the people who do, the ones climbing those mountains high-marking, are a small percentage of the market.
"But they're there and they'll always be there."
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If Mr. Hoffman's fast machines draw the crowds, there is no denying that part of the reason they stick around is the boy's club.
Though families are an important part of the fraternity - fathers and children bond from a young age on the slopes - on any given morning of riding, the booze starts with a shot of liqueur in the coffee, and continues with beers on the mountain. Women ride, too, but back-country riders are primarily men, and the culture reflects it. The jokes are off colour, the bravado inflated, the trucks and trailers enormous.
And the risks are, for many, dismissed as an unavoidable part of the fun. Though a healthy percentage of riders wear proper avalanche gear, 55 per cent of avalanche fatalities in the past decade have been snowmobilers. Of the 5,000 people a year who take two-day Canadian Avalanche Centre safety courses, less than 10 per cent are snowmobilers.
While many complete private courses aimed at snowmobilers, "the community is behind a little bit in the cultural awareness of safety," said Ian Tomm, the centre's executive director.
Even snowmobilers will admit that the thrill of the sport brings inherent perils.
"When you're hiking up the hill [to ski]you've got a lot more time to look around and see your dangers," Mr. Raasch says. "Sledding's a high-speed sport. You can get yourself into trouble much faster. The adrenalin is part of it. But you really have to be careful that you don't mix adrenalin with 100-per-cent danger. And that's very easy to do."