It’s getting hard to find a new snowmobile in Missoula, and it’s not just because motorcycle season is returning.
"We’re down to a couple sleds left," Gull Ski parts manager Kris Doubek said. "A lot of people are still out riding, so the parts and service work has been good, too."
Sales have been brisk in the best winter since 1996-97, according to dealers around western Montana. That’s true in spite of a national economic collapse that could easily have deflated the market for $8,000 recreational purchases.
It’s also a boost for an industry that faces big challenges to where its customers can play.
"I’ve been doing this 30 years, and this has been a good snow year," Kurt’s Polaris shop manager Mike VanDam said. "I live in Seeley, so when I come to work in the morning, I leave wintertime. My driveway has berms this high (pointing to his shoulder)."
In the Kurt’s Polaris showroom, a video clip of hill-climbing snowmobiles looks like a Warren Miller ski film running backward. Helicopter cameras capture riders zooming up the same gullies and chutes that daredevil skiers zip down. VanDam said innovations in snowmobile machine design have made steady progress.
"Every couple of years, all the manufacturers lean on the evolution," VanDam said. "They’re getting cleaner, lighter and more nimble. In the old days, you had to jerk them and manhandle them. Now it’s more like a dirt bike – it’s much easier to control. They’ll make a rider that wasn’t quite as good into a little better rider."
Those innovations have given snowmobiles the ability to reach places never anticipated when many backcountry travel rules were drafted decades ago. Now, both advocates and adversaries are pushing for policy decisions that could determine the future of the industry.
Last fall, the Boise-based Winter Wildlands Alliance petitioned the U.S. Forest Service to treat snowmobiles the same as other off-road vehicles in forest travel plans. A 2005 Forest Service travel management rule exempted snowmobiles from the process, creating what alliance director Mark Menlove called a "free-for-all" of unregulated winter vehicle use.
"We’re not saying snowmobiles should be eliminated, just that there should be a balanced management approach for all forest users," Menlove said. "We’re actually expecting a decision any day now."
In January, a federal judge upheld a ban on snowmobiles and other motorized use in the 130,000-acre Badger-Two Medicine area of the Lewis and Clark National Forest. Snowmobile advocates are challenging a similar proposal on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
"We were riding snowmobiles there forever," VanDam said of the Badger-Two Medicine closure. "I can’t see how that affected the wilderness. There’s some really nice views when you get up there."
Over the past three decades, the area had grown in popularity for summer and winter motorized users. Surrounded by Glacier National Park, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, it also held religious and cultural significance for the Blackfeet Tribe. U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon ruled that was a reasonable justification for allowing only nonmotorized access, which he said would also protect the area’s soil and water quality, wildlife habitat and fishing.
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Montana had 39,680 registered snowmobiles in 2010. That seems like a lot until you compare it to the national average in snowmobile-popular states, which is about 60,000. Or compared to Minnesota, which leads the nation at 256,603.
The numbers come from the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, which also reports the average snowmobile user is 44 years old, has an annual household income of $68,000 and is 82 percent likely to be male. The average cost of a new snowmobile is $8,150, although they can be found used around Missoula for between $500 and $9,000.
