March 27, 2011 Petty Harbor Hill Climbing: (27 Photos)

 

27.   Its now the end of March, and I truly expected the sleds would have been put away for summer long ago, but I'm glad to report that we haven't yet! This past week on the East Coast we had 15cm of snow on Wednesday, followed by another 25cm Friday! 

 

26.   Wednesday evening I set about repairing the damaged primary clutch and drive belt on my sled which left me broken down last weekend at Sooley's Cabin. I had an old Primary Clutch (which malfunctioned 2 years ago), so I took it apart and found the rubber cushion drive disc had separated from the metal disk on the outside of the clutch. With nothing to loose I purchased some high strength automotive Urethane sealer/adhesive and bonded the disc back in place being careful to make sure it was aligned correctly. After letting the adhesive cure for a couple days, I installed the clutch along with a new drive belt Saturday morning. (Thanks to Dennis from newfoundlandmotorsports for lending me his clutch tool)

 

25.   Sunday morning French, Bill & I headed out to the Goulds to make tracks on the fresh fallen snow. Under sunny skies mixed at times with flurries we headed out and found the snow was pretty dense. It was soft enough to carve through, but not enough to plough right through the drifts. Leaving Power's Road, we made a loop around chicken farm road, to Northern Pond road and back via Cochrane Pond Road. We then decided to head over to Petty Harbour as Bill said there were awesome hills over there, French and I had never been there. We headed East on the farmer's road paralleling the Goulds Bypass Highway and picked up the pole line heading towards Petty Harbour, its a pretty easy route to follow.

 

24.   It was definitely an awesome idea to go to Petty Harbour, the hills were absolutely awesome. I cant believe in all my years of sledding I've never been there, its simply beautiful and a hell of a lot of fun.

 

23.   The dense snow provided lots of traction, provided decent protection from rocks, and it still had some give for carving. We spent hours over there pointing our skis at everything we could find, there's simply a myriad of places to play.

 

22.   Some of the climbs certainly had a pucker factor, especially the first few times coming back down from a climb. I had one experience high marking where the snow pack slid out from under me which was hairy for sure!

 

21.

 

20.

 

19.

 

18.

 

17.

 

16.

 

15.

 

14.

 

13.

 

12.   Every time we crested a hill there was another untouched hill behind it, the hills and places to play were seemingly endless!

 

11.

 

10.

 

9.

 

8.

 

7.

 

6.

 

5.

 

4.  

 

3.

 

2.   Having burned a lot of gas, we headed back towards the Goulds, making a pit stop at Tim Horton's in the Goulds for a coffee. This is accessed from the pole line by crossing Fourth Pond then crossing a couple farmers fields. Once back at the trucks, I topped off my tank from my gas can as my older machine is much less fuel efficient then the 2 Nytro's, and we spent another couple hours riding the Goulds/Northern Pond/Bay Bulls Big Pond area. The only mishap of the day was when I lost a rear shock bolt on the bumps in the trail, but luckily I had a spare in my tool kit.

 

1.   French was also pleased to roll over 4000km on his 2009 Nytro X-TX.  All in all it was an awesome day, a lot of the crew are pissed they missed out, but there's always another weekend. (Unless the snow melts, than there's not - lol)

 

Cheers, MIKE

Return to Rips and Trips

Copyright © 2011 Michael Smith