The powder was torn up at the 100 Mile Snow Drags last Sunday.
100 Mile Snowmobile Club president Rick Kyllo said 150 spectators came out to watch 47 snowmobilers compete to see who could go the fastest. Members of the 100 Mile House RCMP were on hand with a radar gun and regularly clocked speeds up to 130 km/hr in 50 feet.
“It seems to be successful and I’m really hoping everyone enjoyed themselves and this becomes an annual event,” Kyllo said Sunday. “I want to see it become a sanctioned event because it’s fun to watch these guys hit the throttle and it’s safe.”
The snow drags were organized as a fundraiser for the South Cariboo Track and Trail Dirt Bike Association. Director Brandon Plewes said that thanks to their business sponsors, the association was able to raise $5,000 from ticket sales and the concession. Despite a brief snowstorm, they saw an increase in both ridership and spectators from the last races they held in 2019.
“We had hundreds of fresh eyes up at the track and that gains exposure for the track. That’s one of the biggest reasons we do this,” Plewes said. “Whether you have dirtbikes or snowmobiles, racing is racing, and if we can get people up to our facility and see what we’ve built it’s just better exposure for us.”
Plewes said while he didn’t race for bragging rights on a snowmobile, he enjoyed seeing so many youngsters and children taking part. Racers came from Burns Lake, Clearwater and Kamloops despite the poor road conditions.
Natalie McCauley came up from Kamloops to race with her fiance Robert Fox. McCauley said she started drag racing only a few years ago but has come to love the thrill of it.
“I’m hoping for a seniors class one day,” McCauley, 54, said. “We would like to win but really we just like to have fun. It’s something we can do together as a couple and something not a lot of people do. I don’t know many other females my age who do this.”
McCauley said drag racing on a snowmobile is simple. She just pins the throttle all the way down and “then hangs on for dear life.” Her top speed Sunday was 128 km/h.
“You pin it to win it, hope you don’t fall, and enjoy it,” McCauley said. “It’s a big adrenaline rush, you just can’t explain it until you’ve done it.”
The top racers of the day were separated into several categories based on their machine. The winners included Chase Tibeault, Natalie McCauley, Ace Mundle, Goel Rauch, Owen Desaulniers, Don Roach, Reichart Sanford, Mike Ratcliff and Jono Hessler.
Kyllo said the event wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of volunteers from his club. Several of them spent hundreds of hours grooming the drag strip before the race, ensuring the snow was packed down.
“It’s been a lot of work to pull this off. We’ve had a lot of guys putting in a lot of hard work to make this go, especially when we got two feet of snow in the middle of the week,” Kyllo said. “They all worked really hard and they’re all old, our youngest volunteer was probably in their late 50s.”
patrick.davies@100milefreepress.net
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