Alright NE vsaloners. The family is going sledding and I am incharge of getting the sleds. Any rec's of kids and family sleds
Dash Sled, Long | Free Shipping at L.L.Bean
If that looks like a bad idea (and don't get me wrong, it sort of is), the light plastic ones they have at Target for $9.95 work fine and reduce the likelihood of a hospital visit.
If you can justify the space needed and the cost, get one toboggan for the family and a few of the cheap plastic sleds. Save the real spending for skis and boots.
my name is Matt
If you think the family will really be into it then it will make sense to purchase (and store) some sleds or tubes
I took my daughter a few times to either kingvale or soda springs (ten years ago, I forgot which) and paid the "lift" fees and rented the tubes so we could tow up and slide down again and again and again. I get that this is not quite the idyllic side of the road sled build a snowman sled its free but for the cost of the sleds...but I dont want to store those things since the usage window is small (kids age out and want to snowboard or ski etc.) and who knows what the weather will be. if you bought those five years ago they would have been sitting what a waste of money. the current rain and snow like this seems like the first time in a decade...
BTW...that house in san rafael that got split in two by the mudslide last week was the house net door to the one my sister-in-law owned ten years ago. her old house is red tagged now.
when i was a wee one
1inch bmx stem shoved in the 'steerer tube' of a gt snowracer with the wheel pulled off. Cut apart the springs on the fork and the brake so the thing will barspin
put a bmx bar on, then heat the skis with steam to bend the backs up so they dont dig in riding backwards
off you go now
Simple plastic sleds work well on sierra cement. A runner sled wants hard ice, it will be useless.
Unless you want to pony up for a toboggan.
Depends on snow conditions, but a combo of a simple plastic sled, inflatable tube and a disk (metal or plastic) could make for good fun.
^^^
This
As mentioned, runner sleds tear it up but require very hard packed conditions. The various sleds with flat bottoms allow you to slide on nearly any condition. Of course you will have very little control...but that is part of the fun.
Somethign like this will keep everyone entertained for a long time.
OD-BF154_SLEDS_P_20150121132117.jpg
Brian McLaughlin
What you want is some of these:
Amazon.com: ERA GROUP 96 6 x2 x6 Pro Exped Sled: Home Improvement
The Expedition sled.
It's a bigger, heavier duty plastic sled - which means it's stiff enough to track well and you can actually make it turn. Plus a full five feet long so you can put a bunch of kids in it. Hear me now, believe me later.
ohhh - and we had one of these when my kid was little.
Snow Tubes | Outdoor Gear at L.L.Bean
Was ridiculously fun...
But you only get to go sledding after all the shoveling is done. Make sure you enforce that one :)
Brian McLaughlin
Runner sleds on frozen snowmobile trails are a whole lot of fun. Except when you go rapidly airborne because the sled hit a rut at speed and headed off laterally so you do a face plant on sandpaper ice. Which is actually kind of fun because your face is numb and when you walk in the house with blood all over your front your mom sort of freaks out.
When I was a kid I guess we had some big snow years. Two of my older brothers built a toboggan run all the way down the field behind the house - banked corners that we hauled buckets of water to and froze to solid ice and everything. It was the end of a toboggan when one of them almost made the big hook corner at the bottom but not quite and went off over the top into the hedgerow.
Which reminds me to make a PSA. If you ever get the urge to try the luge up in Lake Placid be aware that if you don't know what you're doing you will get mauled banging off one side of the run and then the other. If you understeer, wham. If you oversteer, wham. If you wham hard enough, you get two or three reaction whams. It's great. Then of course I thought after that the bobsled can't be that bad. It looks so smooth when you see it on TV. It's not. You do 90 to 180 degree rotations in about .001 second as you go into the corners. Walking up I watched a sled go by trundling along at the beginning. It looked slow. I thought this is going to be almost disappointing. Then I got in and the trees are just zooming by... and I realized that was the beginning where it looked slow... I knew at that moment if I was going to be anything, disappointed wasn't it.
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