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Drew McNaughton, staff member at Community Connections, took the plunge recently in Warren, Vt. (dennis curran for the boston globe) |
WARREN, Vt. - Blanketed by 2 feet of fresh snow, Lincoln Gap Road twists and dips like an Olympic luge course, dropping 1,100 vertical feet over a distance of 1.75 miles. Traveling 25 miles per hour on one's knees around hairpin turns, balanced on a plastic sled a few inches above the snow, makes a full-road descent as different from backyard sledding as whitewater kayaking is from pond canoeing.
Even the hurtle down Lincoln Gap Road feels tame, however, compared with what freesledders Drew McNaughton and Martin De Geus are doing above the roadway. Climbing deep into the surrounding woods through hip-deep snow, they kneel on sleds, strap themselves in, and take off from sheer ice walls and rock faces, sending up plumes of spray as they careen downward through the trees.
Tough on the knees? Maybe. It's not for the fainthearted, either, or the helmetless, given the danger of colliding with rocks and trees. But devotees of extreme sledding say the sport is safe: The sleds are easier to control than many conventional models, thanks to their snow-gripping bottoms and the kneeling posture of the rider. They also work optimally on the kind of snow that's been plentiful around New England this winter: deep, powdery soft, and forgiving.
Extreme sledding, an increasingly popular winter sport that has both gravity and "green" going for it, isn't about stress on the joints and nerves anyway. It's all about speed, control, and freedom - especially freedom from the crowds and the cost attached to other winter sports like skiing and snowboarding.
"This is all I do now," says McNaughton, 29, an outdoor sports enthusiast and staff member at Community Connections, an after-school program in Montpelier. "It's so much more rewarding. You get the exercise benefit of walking uphill, and then you get all this." His sweeping gesture takes in the full back-country panorama.
De Geus, 16, who is part of the after-school program, got hooked on freesledding two years ago. "You have amazing control of these sleds," he says, brushing clumps of snow off his helmet. "I also snowboard, but this is even more of a thrill."
The sled De Geus is referring to is made by Mad River Rocket, a company in tiny Warren, Vt., located a few miles from the Sugarbush ski area. Made of rugged polyethylene, the $85 sled features foam knee pads, an adjustable belt, and a concave hollow running the length of its underside. This "negative keel" forms a rail of snow underneath as the sled slides forward, allowing riders, using arm thrusts and weight shifts, to carve turns the way a snowboarder or surfer might. The most popular Rocket model weighs 6 pounds and measures 47 inches long, easy to carry up a steep hill and bullet-fast to ride down.
Mad River Rocket sells 7,000 of these sleds a year. While not a huge number by ski industry standards, it's 20 times what the company sold eight years ago, one indication that freesledding is carving out a winter-sports niche.
Company president Whitney Phillips, who has led the day's expedition up Lincoln Gap Road, said the sleds are attracting fans because they provide thrills but, because of their maneuverability, are safer than many conventional sleds. "We're marketing to kids who defy their parents and to parents who want something safe for their kids, to redneck snowmobilers and crunchy snowshoers, too," he says.
Downhill skiing is considered a way to enjoy nature while recreating, adds Phillips. "But when you think about it, the carbon footprint is huge," he says, referring to the energy used by the lifts and lodges. "And you can only do it in certain places. Outside of Vermont's ski areas, we've got the entire Green Mountains as our playground."
Phillips, 29, a former competitive skier, is the individual most responsible for elevating Rocket sleds from recreational toy to X-Games status. Not surprisingly in this YouTube age, homemade videos have become one of his most potent marketing tools.
Searching the Web for "extreme sledding" videos last summer, Phillips contacted as many of the videos' producers as he could find. In exchange for a few free sleds, he then enlisted them in a sledding video competition (entrants will be judged later this month). He also created a website (teamsleds.com) dedicated to daredevil sledding and gotta-see-this videos.
Next winter, Mad River Rocket plans to open a 250-acre sledding park on nearby Prickly Mountain. There, freesledders will be able to take a rope tow to the top - no lift fees required - and slalom down through the glades.
"What we've really created is a social experiment," says Phillips. "There are kids in Alaska riding down glaciers and skateboarders in Manchester [Vt.] grabbing sleds and looking for the biggest rails to ride. It's amazing what two different groups of kids will do with the same product."
Freesledding is not without risk, acknowledges Phillips, although he says he has yet to hear of a serious freesledding-related injury. The company website (madriverrocket.com) advises sledders to avoid icy surfaces and wear protective gear, including helmets, goggles, and gloves.
"We always say, never sled above your ability level and always use common sense," says Phillips.
One dedicated Rocket videographer is Tom Mull, a 17-year-old Manchester freesledder who has ridden snowboards and skateboards for years. A couple of years ago, says Mull, he and some friends started doing tricks "on sleds we bought from Kmart." Once they got on a Rocket sled, he says, their imaginations really took off. "It's easy to learn and not very expensive" says Mull, who's working on his fourth video this season while recovering from an unrelated hip operation. "A lot of my friends want to be part of the revolution."
If that revolution has a patriarch, it's David Sellers, a local architect who founded the sled company in 1984. An early "green" movement proponent, Sellers and some pals started sledding the hills above Warren in the late 1970s, eventually replacing their crash-prone toboggans and cheap, store-bought sleds with homemade models that were far more maneuverable.
"We tried to figure out how you could go sledding in Vermont without cutting down any trees or killing yourself," he recalls. "But when we came up with this sled, we had no idea it would become so popular."
Sellers says his "a-ha" moment came five winters ago, when two teenagers showed up in Warren one day, asking if they could demonstrate a few tricks they'd been practicing.
"They went up a hill in back of the office and did the same stuff everyone does," Sellers recalls. "Then they made this jump, which looked pretty cool. One kid comes down and does a back flip. Then the other does a front flip. Then a barrel roll. 'Oh. My. God,' I said."
Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
