Powersports racing as a spectator is much like viewing bison at Yellowstone National Park; you want to keep your distance. As much as I'd love to be up close and personal with these machines, breathing in their two-stroke fumes, listening to their turbocharged engines scream like pissed-off squirrels, and watching their riders do the impossible, I ain't getting anywhere close enough for things to go wrong.
Because, in fact, things can and do go wrong all the time when riders are on the absolute limit.
So when I saw the video linked below of a snowmobile hillclimb event that took place in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and saw how close the spectators were to the furious two-stroke sleds making their way up some gnarly course designed to throw riders off, the following crash was always inevitable.
Not only did the rider get bucked off, but the sled then went shooting into the air, came crashing down into those spectators, and then did its level best to take more people out as it slid down the hill. It was a comedy of errors, chief among them letting folks that close to the action. I'm sorry to say, the snowmobile may be friend-shaped, but it is not your friend.
Do not pet.
Thankfully, no one was seriously injured from the crash that looks straight out of a 1980s Group B Rally video. But the clip comes from the 2025 Jackson Hole Snowmobile Hillclimb event, which is part of the Rocky Mountain Snowmobile Hill Climb Association, and held at Snow King Mountain. As you can see, the rider was doing all right going up the hill, but after numerous runs up the climb, and the ruts beginning to form from past entrants, things went sideways quick.
The rider in question is Brock Sharp out of Moxee, Washington and who was riding a Ski-Doo in the Open Mod class. He DNF'd due to the above clip, as there was no getting that sled back to the mountain after its attempted escape.
As for the top three in the class, each made it up the hill in under 1:30, though a whopping four seconds separated 1st and 2nd, but only .6 seconds separated 2nd and 3rd. I'd still personally love to attend an event and witness it all firsthand. I'd just do it from a good ways away, as I'm not looking to have a sled track slap me across the face anytime soon.
