SNOW BIKING · Preparation

TRIP PREP: SPARES, FUEL & FIELD FIXES

9 min · Full library · written from fifteen years in the terrain

The point

After this lesson you can pack a snowbike day so a mechanical becomes a story instead of a stranding: fuel maths done honestly, the right spares aboard, and the field fixes rehearsed.

Half the answer, free

The Technique

  1. Fuel is the snowbike's defining constraint: a stock moto tank working hard in deep snow burns down brutally fast, and range in the deep can be a fraction of a trail day. Do the honest maths for your bike and your zones, carry auxiliary fuel or plan sled support accordingly, and hold a hard reserve for getting stuck. Confirm typical consumption framing for the filmed bikes with the reviewing pro.
  2. The spares list earns its weight: drive chain master link, spare levers, plugs if applicable, tow strap, and the kit-specific vulnerable items your track system's manual names. Ask your kit's owner community what actually breaks; carry that.
  3. Tools that fit the bike: the specific sizes your bike and kit need, not a generic roll. Test that your kit can perform every fix you claim it can, in gloves, in the shed, once.
Still under the glass
  • 3 more technique steps
  • The 3 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
  • The drill that builds the reflex
  • The safety non-negotiables

It opens when you book a trip that runs snow biking - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.

Book a trip, unlock this libraryOr put $200 down - unlock it today

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First Tracks

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Read this before you send

These sports kill people. Not rarely, and not only the reckless - every season they kill riders who were experienced, fit, well equipped and doing everything properly. That is the honest starting position and everything else we do sits on top of it.

The mountain does not know who you are. Snow releases on people with twenty years in it. Machines roll on riders who have done that line a hundred times. Water, rock, trees and other people are indifferent to how good you have become. Every time you go out you are accepting a real chance that it goes wrong, and no amount of skill removes that chance - it only changes the odds.

What that looks like in these disciplines, plainly: avalanche burial and asphyxiation, being crushed under a machine, head and spinal injuries from falls and impacts, drowning, hypothermia, and collisions with trees, rocks and other riders.

We work in remote country, so distance is part of it. A serious injury usually means hours before a helicopter can reach you, and weather sometimes means no helicopter at all. Help being close is not a feature of any trip we run.

This is exactly why we prepare the way we do. Training before you ride, gear standards, minimum party sizes, people who know the ground, and a willingness to call a day off. All of it is about improving your odds and making the group capable of looking after itself. None of it makes anything safe, none of it makes anyone competent, and passing our training is not a qualification. Anybody who tells you they can make this safe is selling something.

Everyone out there is relying on everyone else having been honest about what they can actually do. If reading this has made you hesitate, that is worth listening to rather than talking yourself out of.

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