ROLLING IT OUT, RESTARTING IT: SLED RECOVERY AND THE FLOODED ENGINE

The Technique

1. Read the situation before you touch the machine, because thirty seconds of assessment saves twenty minutes of shovelling. Look at where the sled is buried, how deep, and which way is downhill, because everything that follows works with gravity rather than against it. Look above you and around you for avalanche terrain, cornices, tree wells and deadfall, and if the slope has any avalanche potential, that assessment comes before any recovery decision at all. Check whether the sled is resting on something solid, whether a ski is hooked under a buried log or a rock, and whether the track is packed in or free. Then decide the direction you want the machine pointing when you are finished, which is almost always downhill or across to a firmer line. Turn the engine off and pull the tether before you put hands on it. A sled that fires while you are lifting it, or a throttle that gets loaded up under snow, is how people get hurt on their own machine.
2. Prepare the roll before you attempt it. Rolling only works if the snow gives the machine somewhere to go, so clear the snow away from the uphill side and from the side you intend to roll it towards, and dig the running board out on the side you will be lifting from so you have something to grip and so the board is not acting as an anchor. Stamp a platform for your own feet, because you cannot lift from a position where you are also sinking. Work out where the handlebars, the windscreen and the hood are going to end up so you are not rolling the machine onto a rock or a stump, and if there is a partner, agree who is lifting, who is guiding the front, and which way it is going before anyone pulls.
3. Roll it on its side and then over, using the machine's own structure as your leverage. Grip the running board edge at the rear and the ski or the front bumper at the front, get your feet under your shoulders, keep your back straight and your hips low, and drive up with your legs rather than pulling with your back. Take it to the point of balance on its side, pause there and let the snow fall away, then continue it over. Do not use the windscreen, the mirrors, the hood or the handlebar controls as handles, because they break and they are what you need for the ride home. Keep your body out from under the machine at all times and never work from directly downhill of it on a slope. Be careful of the heat exchanger under the running boards, since bending or puncturing it puts coolant out onto the snow and ends the day properly, and be careful of the exhaust and the tunnel, which stay hot enough to burn through a glove long after shutdown. With a partner, roll on a count, keep the pace slow and controlled, and never let one person take the load while the other repositions.
4. Set the machine up to drive out before you start it. A sled that is free but still in a hole will simply dig itself back in, so once it is over, point the nose downhill or along the firmest line you can find, and pack a runway in front of the track by stomping the snow down for a few metres with your boots. Clear the packed snow out from under the skis so they can float rather than plough, and clear the tunnel and the track of the loose snow you have just dumped into it. Then start it, get on, and apply the throttle smoothly and progressively rather than in a stab, keeping your weight forward and standing so the track can climb up onto the snow you packed instead of trenching. If it starts to dig, come off the throttle immediately rather than trying to power through, because a spinning track digs faster than you can shovel.
5. Know when rolling is the wrong answer. Do not roll a sled that is above you on a steep slope where it can tumble and take you with it, or where it will slide into trees or a creek bed. Do not roll it head first into a tree well or where the front will drop into a void you cannot see the bottom of. Do not roll it if a ski, an A-arm or the track is hooked hard on a buried obstacle, because you will bend components rather than free the machine, so dig to the obstacle first and clear it. Do not roll a machine with a fuel leak, a damaged tank or spilled fuel around it. And do not roll it at all if you are alone, exhausted and getting cold, because the risk of a back injury or a rolled machine on top of you goes up sharply with fatigue. In those cases, dig, use a rope and a second machine, or accept a slower extraction.
6. A hard stuck session is the classic way to flood a two-stroke sled, so learn to recognise it before you keep cranking. Flooding happens when the engine gets far more fuel than it can burn, and on a sled that means repeated failed starts each pumping in fresh mixture, choke left on after the engine has caught or choke used on an engine that was already warm, over-priming, or a hot restart after a stuck session where the engine bay is heat soaked. You recognise it by smell first, a strong raw petrol smell around the machine, and by behaviour second, an engine that fires briefly and dies, or that cranks freely and evenly and never fires at all. Pull a plug and look at it. A plug that is visibly wet with fuel, black and shiny, confirms it. Stop cranking at that point, because every further attempt makes the flooding worse, drowns the plugs again, kills the battery and washes lubrication off the bore.
7. Recover it methodically. Turn the choke fully off and leave it off. Pull the plugs, keep them somewhere you will not lose them in the snow, and earth the leads against bare metal or disconnect them so you are not sparking near fuel vapour. With the plugs out, turn the engine over in short bursts to pump the excess fuel out of the cylinders, keeping your face clear of the plug holes. Dry the plugs, either by wiping and warming them or by fitting the spare pair from your kit, which is why you carry them. Refit, reconnect, and then use the clearing technique that suits the fuel system. On a carburetted engine, hold the throttle wide open with the choke off while cranking, which maximises airflow through the engine and helps sweep the excess fuel out, then ease the throttle back as it catches and hold a fast idle until it settles. On a fuel injected sled, wide open throttle during cranking usually triggers a clear-flood mode in which the ECU cuts or greatly reduces injection, so the same hand position works but for a different reason. Fuel injected sleds also have no choke at all, so if yours flooded, look for a stuck injector, a failing temperature sensor, or over-cranking rather than rider error. Once it starts, let it warm properly and do not shut it down straight away.
8. Check the belt and the clutches after any hard stuck session, because that is where the heat went. A track that has been spinning against packed snow makes the belt slip, and a slipping belt gets hot enough to glaze, delaminate, chunk or let go entirely, usually a kilometre after you free the machine rather than at the moment of the abuse. Let it cool, then pull the clutch guard and look at the belt for missing cogs, cracked or rounded edges, exposed cords, a shiny glazed surface or a burnt smell, and check the width against a new one if you carry a spare. Replace it in the field if it is marginal rather than riding it out, because a belt that lets go at speed can take the guard and damage the clutch faces. To change one, park on level ground, engine off and tether out, remove the belt guard, open the driven clutch using the belt change lever if the machine has one or by spreading the sheaves, work the old belt off the driven clutch first and then the drive, and fit the new one the correct way around following the direction marking, then check the deflection before you refit the guard. Clean the snow and belt dust out of the clutch area while it is open.
9. Deal with the cold weather problems that show up right after a recovery, when you are wet with sweat and the machine has been sitting. Throttle and brake controls freeze because snow packs into the lever, the cable and the caliper and then refreezes, so work the throttle and the brake fully several times before you ride away and confirm the throttle returns by itself every time. If a control is frozen, warm it with your hands or hold it near the exhaust manifold for a short time, clear the packed ice out of the lever housing, then work it until it moves freely, and never ride a machine whose throttle does not snap closed on its own. Batteries lose a large part of their cranking ability in deep cold, so an electric start machine that turns over slowly after a long stuck session is often just cold and flat rather than broken, and grinding the starter finishes the job. Use the recoil if the sled has one: pull the handle out slowly until you feel it engage, then pull firmly through the full stroke, and let the rope return under control rather than snapping back, and never wrap the rope around your hand. If the battery is flat and there is no recoil, get a tow start or a jump from another machine and then keep the engine running until you are somewhere you are happy to stop. Above all, judge your own state honestly. If you are soaked, cold and out of light, freeing the machine matters less than getting yourself and the group to safety.

Common Mistakes

Digging first and thinking later. Fix: assess the terrain and the fall line, decide the exit direction, and roll it if the snow allows, because it is usually faster and far less exhausting.

• Lifting with the back or hauling on the handlebars and windscreen. Fix: grip the running board and the ski or the front bumper, hips low, straight back, drive with the legs.
• Rolling the machine onto its heat exchanger or into a rock. Fix: clear the landing side first and look at what is under the snow before you commit.
• Freeing it and then hammering the throttle from a standing start. Fix: point it downhill, stomp a runway, stand forward and feed the throttle in progressively.
• Cranking a flooded engine again because this attempt might be different. Fix: raw fuel smell or a wet plug means stop, plugs out, clear the cylinders, dry plugs, choke off.
• Leaving the choke on after it fires. Fix: back it off as soon as the engine catches, and use no choke at all on a warm restart.
• Riding away on a belt that has been slipped hard. Fix: pull the guard, inspect it properly, and change it in the field if it is marginal.

The Drill

In the yard or the car park, with the engine off and the tether out, practise the roll on flat ground until the lift position feels automatic and you can do it without touching the windscreen or the hood. Then practise the field belt change until you can do it in gloves, cold, in under ten minutes, including finding your tools. Finally, audit the underseat kit: plug spanner, spare plugs, spare belt, the specific tools for the belt guard and the clutch, spare clutch and guard bolts, tow rope, a shovel that packs down small, and a probe. Check that the recoil works and that you know where the tools live before you need them at last light.

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