Yesterday, we took an unbelievable snowmobile tour in Vail. I had never snowmobiled before – so we decided to take a 4 hour tour with Nova Guides (one of the big guide companies in Vail Valley). They took us out in groups of 8 and we had over 80 miles of national forest track available to ride.

The tracks were about 20 minutes past Minturn on route 24 (which before I-70 was the only way from Vail to Denver) – passing through Redcliff, an relatively recently abandoned mining town.

Here are some of the photos from atop the tracks at about 12,000 feet. You can see Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Vail and some other local chutes. The highlight of the trip (other than riding around powder at 50+ mph) was seeing one of the riders in our group fall off his snowmobile and subsequently have it roll 400 yards down a bank of waist-high powder.

The first video shows the view atop the mountain. The second is of the fallen snowmobile.

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