old deeres in the mountains

[largecar04]

Whenever I tell someone that I'm taking my old deeres out to Colorado or wyoming to ride I always get the same response. "You can't ride those old sled in the mountains! It just doesn't work!" I'm not old enough to know, but what did people do back in the late 70s/early 80s before the new sleds came about? I'm pretty sure people just didn't ride in the mountains! I know they don't handle deep snow too well so was it strictly groomed trails only?

[deeredr]

I have personally spent quite some time digging a JDX8 out after I strayed off the trail.
Other than that it worked fine. We sold tons of sleds so they must have been okay for
someone. Later sleds were super touchy on the carb jetting. Had to change to go from
our shop (6200 ft) to the mountains to get them to run right.

Other than that I've never heard of any problems mountain riding them.

Greg

[a572mike]

I spent some time on a Trailfire and an el Tigre 5000 in the Big Horns during my youth. If you did go off trail, you were very careful about how deep of snow you'd go into, and were very mindful of maintaining your momentum. The Trailfire was way better off trail than the el Tigre.

[idMXLT]

We ride in the mountains with variety of old sleds, some do really well.... others not so much. For my LF it's mostly trails only, but ungroomed mountain roads and 2 tracks can be run in fairly deep snow with a skilled rider. Off trail it's usually the Elans for us.