A Flying Black Lab and Other Misadventures in Snowmobiling

We ran into the house and yelled, "Mom's going to try it!" My dad and two brothers and sister and I watched as we saw a flash go by the dining room window, across the lawn and over the dead end gravel road of our rural Moorhead, Minnesota home. We ran outside but all we could see was one handle bar and a boot on the far side of the road. Mom had tipped over and caught the laces of her boot on the handle bar and was laughing about her mishap. She was later dubbed “Snoopy” by someone in the family because of the way she looked when she rode the snowmobile.

As teenagers there were two things we lived for – duck hunting in the fall and snowmobiling in the winter. They were just about as greatly anticipated as that of the appearance of St. Nick. We couldn’t wait for the duck hunting season to open the first part of October and we couldn’t wait for it to snow in November so we could ride the snowmobiles. To quote my mom, “Once snowmobiling started, NOTHING else got done around the house.”

Our addiction to snowmobiling began in December of 1968. On Christmas Eve to be exact. My dad and brothers and I drove up to Roseau, Minnesota to pick up a brand new 1969 Polaris Colt. It had a steel frame, a 300cc single cylinder JLO engine, and bogey wheel suspension. We were in heaven! (A guy on EBay just recently sold a ’69 Colt, still in the crate, for $6500!)

But there was just one problem – we couldn’t get it started. Until Polaris came out with the twin cylinder Star engines in about 1970, the JLO engines were just about the most temperamental starting things on the planet. So that Christmas Day we actually took the back door of the house off the hinges, brought the snowmobile INSIDE to warm it up (bless my mom’s heart – I don’t think Martha Stewart would have ever allowed that). It was flooded and we didn’t know about the magical little drain plug at the bottom of the crankcase. I will always remember the site of spark plugs warming themselves on the burner on the stove. That still brings a tear to my eye.

When my dad and brothers finally got it started there was joy in the Vander Ark household! We drove it at least 10 miles around the yard and down the ditches before it broke down. The first couple of years the snowmobiles were in the garage shop getting fixed just as much as they were being ridden. The next year we got a 1970 Charger and that had its share of flaws also. I remember welding the foot rests on either the Colt or Charger – I had the back propped up and didn’t realize there was a slight gasoline leak (the gas tank was on the back) which ran down the snow covered running board and toward where I was welding. I flipped up the welding mask only to see the running board on fire. Snow works really well to put out a fire.

It wasn’t until the fall of 1970 when we got the first TX that things really changed. It had the Polaris Star engine and slide rail suspension. But the coolest part was that the engine stuck out of the hood. I think it was in late February of 1971 that my brother and I planned to ride the sleds to our grandparents in Madison, Minnesota – 150 miles away! In our teenager minds an even greater achievement than the Plaisted Polar Expedition that rode snowmobiles to the North Pole in 1968. They had to battle 474 miles across towering ice ridges, open water leads, and the drifting ice pack on their way to the pole. But hey, we had to battle the rock hard ditches of the Red River Valley on the way to Grandma’s house! And they may have had the backing of the Canadian Air Force, but we had far more important backing – that of our mom and dad! We planned and packed and planned and packed. No support vehicles – just a bunch of tools, tape, wire and a can of quick start. We got halfway when the motor mounts on the Charger broke and we had to leave it with a farmer by Wheaton, MN. We rode the rest of the way on the TX and finally made it to grandma’s about 6:00. Somewhere near Ortonville, Minnesota we heard a loud boom in the back of the snowmobile. The can of quick start had exploded from the bumpy day-long ride. But we finally made it. That’s one small step for two teenagers, one giant leap for snowmobilekind.

A couple of years later a bunch of us actually rode snowmobiles from Fargo to Winnipeg -- 240 miles – in one day! My biggest memory of that trip was hitting a manure spreader north of the border. I think my dad had sort of kind of told us to ride together but, as a typical lead-footed teenager, I wanted to be out front. A few miles into Canada I encountered a farmer on his tractor – he was headed south, was pulling a manure spreader and I was heading north and was not pulling anything. The farmer turned east off the highway directly in front of me. I hit the brakes on the TX, slid the machine sideways and slammed into the wheel of the manure spreader. My ankle was caught between the sled and the wheel of the spreader. It was like a fly hitting the side of an elephant. I got off the machine, limped up to the guy on the tractor, and asked, “Are you all right?” Maybe he swore at me in Canadian, I can’t remember.

For Christmas one year I wanted a new snowmobile helmet lettered with the words, “The Flying Dutchman.” After some gifts were opened on Christmas Eve my family said, "Danny, why don’t you open up your gift?" I knew it was the helmet. I ripped off the paper ripped open the box. It was just a horrible looking old white helmet that was dreadfully lettered with a black permanent marker. They asked me how I liked it. “Well, uh, it’s nice.” I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Santa. They all laughed and then gave me the real thing. My dad was always the practical joker. (Like when my younger brother got married. He was a lieutenant in the Army and, after the wedding, was given a couple of weeks to get to his duty station in Virginia. My dad had someone from the radio station pretend that he was a sergeant in the Army with a change in orders for my brother. The imposter called my brother the NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING to inform him that he had to leave immediately for the WEST COAST! We all had a good laugh from that).

A couple of months ago, my mom mentioned that our sister Lisa, the youngest of the four kids, would never hang her snowmobile suit with us three boys. Something about the fact that ours were icky. I emailed her about that and this was her exact reply, “Yes, she's right. You got it. In fact I still have my suit. It's in a box in the garage and it still looks like new.” That’s just sick.

The late 60’s and early 70’s was the first golden era of snowmobiling. And it seemed that everyone was manufacturing snowmobiles. Not only did you have the biggies, but there were also a zillion other makes: Massey Ferguson, John Deere, Rupp, Scorpion, Yukon King, Viking, Mercury, and Evinrude. There was one (I can’t remember the name of it) but you rode side-by-side in sort of a cockpit. There was Alouette, Ariens, and Suzuki. There was Boa Ski, Chaparral, Homelite and Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson? There was Kawasaki, Montgomery Ward, Sears (did JC Penney make a snowmobile?), Moto-Ski, Northway, Mallard, Roll-O-Flex, and Silverline. There was Ski-Bee, Ski-Daddler, Ski-Doo, Ski-Jet, Skiroule, Ski-Whiz and Ski-Zoom… There was Sno Cub, Sno Flite, Sno Fury, Sno Ghia, Sno-Pac, Sno-Pony, Sno-Prince and even a Snow Flake. My high school friend Mark had a Sno Jet. He thought they were so cool because the track left the word “Sno Jet” imprinted in the snow. A couple of times we wanted to leave him imprinted in the snow. The “Snowmobile Service Manual 11th Edition (1962-1986)" lists 75 snowmobile manufacturers. 75! But as a Polaris family, we hated both Ski-Doo and Arctic Cat. To us, they were Ski-Don’t and Arctic Rat. A friend from Hayward, Wisconsin read this story and emailed me: “You don’t want to know what we called Polaris, it wasn’t very nice!” I asked where she grew up. “Thief River Falls.” No wonder :>). Today, the site of a vintage snowmobile ride and the thick blue haze of two-cycle exhaust brings back some great memories.

In about 1969 I went with my dad to a snowmobile race in Brainerd. I saw the Rupp Dragster up close. It was a really cool twin track snowmobile in the shape of a dragster. The track announcer said Mickey Rupp would be driving the dragster that day. I had a black and white 8x10 glossy photo of this amazing machine and took it up to the Rupp team for Mickey to sign it. “Don’t let ‘em snow job ya kid!” one of the guys said. Meaning this – Mickey ain’t anywhere close to Minnesota. Someone signed his name for me though.

My brothers and I also did the racing thing. They may not admit it, but I have actually won the most money in the family from snowmobiling racing. An amazing $35.00 for winning a junior race in Madison, Minnesota. A while back I asked my older brother if he remembers how much he made. He said he thought about $15.00. I gleefully informed him that I had doubled his earnings. But he disputes it, he thinks I just have a better memory. Once at the Glyndon Speedway I was on the starting line with the old 69 Colt which had a megaphone exhaust pipe. It didn’t actually go real fast but it sounded fast. The flag dropped, I hit the throttle and the engine died. I looked over at the sidelines and a high school classmate was laughing at me.

One of the highlights of winter was going with our dad when he covered the Winnipeg to St. Paul I-500 Snowmobile Race for KFGO radio station. That was huge for us. My brothers and I would keep the stats and we would stop every so often so my dad could phone in a report. “This is Van Vander Ark reporting from Pembina,” or Karlstad, or Crookston, or Ada, or Alexandria or St. Paul. He tried covering the race one year with a small plane, but got stuck at a little airport in Ada and wound up using a car anyway. So that was the end of covering the I-500 by air. And one year he entered the I-500 as a press entrant. He loved telling the story of passing Stan Hayes, one of the pro drivers for Polaris, on the lakes north of Alexandria, Minnesota. Unfortunately though, on that day Stan ran out of gas a mile short of the finish line. A high school classmate of mine rode in the I-500, and when he left Winnipeg it was about -30 and his goggles had broken. When he came back to school he kind of looked like Rory Raccoon with the frost bitten area around his eyes. He was the same guy that laughed at me at the starting line when my snowmobile died. That’s what he gets.

I got married at age 18 and then at 19 joined the Army so I wasn’t around Minnesota much after 1974. When I told my family I was going to get married, my younger brother Kevin said, “Danny, what about snowmobiling?” Kevin did most of the snowmobile racing later on. He entered several cross country races and also entered the I-500 twice and did real well. He was up with the lead pack one year but he hadn’t reinforced the front suspension like the pro’s had and eventually broke down from the brutal ride. One of the racers said that the I-500 wasn’t so much a race as it was an ordeal.

In 1969 our dad was invited by Ted Otto from Polaris to cover the Midnight Sun 600 which ran from Anchorage to Fairbanks. At one spot along the way (Tok) it was -71 and at another spot the National Guard had recorded a wind-chill of -145. At the finish line in Fairbanks it was -43. The conditions must have just been simply too vicious because I think they only ran that race one year.

A few days ago I emailed Ken Kjelvik, one of my high school friends, about vintage snowmobiles. At the end of his email reply he said this, “Man, we put a lot of miles on back then, never to cold, never to sore to ride, it was just plain fun.” It certainly was.

My dad’s sister in Florida and my mom’s sister in California couldn’t understand why our mom and dad chose to live in northern Minnesota. But for them (and us) there were many reasons to live in this wonderful area – the four seasons, the 10,000 lakes, the brilliant fall colors, the beauty of freshly snow-covered landscape, the sound of geese heading south in the winter. And perhaps a small part of that choice was the joy of snowmobiling in the winter. Our dad, who passed away in 2002, simply loved the sport and we are grateful for all of the wonderful memories he and our mom provided us.

But I will leave you with a little story that my dad wrote in about 1999. I chuckle every time I read it. The following is in his own words: “Over the years I continued enjoying the sport, but had a close call one day after an early season snowfall. I had purchased a 1978 Polaris liquid cooled machine and took it out for a ride along the mile long dead end gravel road where we lived east of Moorhead. After riding in the ditch for a little bit I decided to try it out on the road. I took a good look to make sure that Max, our big black lab (that liked to ride with me on the snowmobile) had gone back to the house. I didn't see him and so I decided to try it out as fast as I could go down the hardpacked road. Taking a quick look at the speedometer as it passed 75mph, I was horrified when I looked up and saw Max coming out of the ditch directly in front of me. He ran right down the middle of the road! I tried to turn to miss him, but couldn’t – I was going to fast. I caught sight of him flying through the air after I scooped him up with the front of the snowmobile. My machine started sliding sideways and finally caught hold of the rough gravel on the side of the road and flipped over. I remember seeing the machine flying over me upside down and I prayed quickly that it wouldn't fall on me. It cleared the road ditch and landed right side up in the field. Amazingly, only the windshield was broken! I slid down the road for some distance and finally into the ditch near a neighbor's house. With wobbly knees I ran onto the road expecting to find Max dead or badly injured. But at first I couldn’t find him. I then looked toward our house and saw him running at break neck speed down the long driveway. I ran after him and caught up with him at the back door. We were both shaking. I checked him over carefully and found only a small cut on one of his feet. Later, I went back to the spot where we impacted and where Max the Wonder Dog had landed. At the landing spot you could clearly see his high-speed dog tracks on the edge of the road. From the point of impact to where Max landed it was a distance of some 75 feet. That has to be a world record for a Flying Black Labrador!”