"Winter is long here," Henry said, "unless you have fun stuff to do."
Most people I know in Stowe ski, snowboard, or snowshoe - or all three. High-performance sledding seems like a natural next step. Many of us have fond memories of the old Flexible Flyer, but there's no denying that old-fashioned sled's shortcomings: narrow iron runners that sink in soft snow, unforgiving wooden slats that make bumps and jumps feel like a WWF Smackdown, and unresponsive steering that makes sledding among the trees a suicidal act. These new sleds address all those shortcomings, and they're far lighter when you're hauling them uphill.
Henry sized me up and encouraged me to rent an Airboard, an imported sled favored by baby boomers for its cushy ride. It deflates and folds flat for tossing into a rucksack. Once inflated, it's a fat delta wing of a pillow made of the same puncture-resistant material as a whitewater raft. The bottom side of the Airboard has plastic channels that grip the snow and give the sled surprising maneuverability.
I was already sold on the Hammerhead, which is a beautiful piece of design that looks as if it emerged from a computer-aided program that morphed the old-time Flexible Flyer, a webbed-deck snowshoe, and a snowmobile without the engine into a light, sleek machine with super-steerable front skis mounted on a flexible bar. "It's the white-wa ter kayak of sleds," Henry said.
He explained that riding the Airboard or the Hammerhead was largely intuitive. Then he pointed to the other Vermont-made sled, the Mad River Rocket. "This one has a bit more of a learning curve," he cautioned. The sled is not as sleek and elegant as the Hammerhead, and at first glance resembles some of the plastic sleds that Wal-Mart stacks up next to the plastic snow shovels and barrels of sidewalk melt. But the design gives it amazing capabilities, especially in soft snow. Rather than sit or lie on it, the Mad River Rocket requires you to kneel, with a strap across your calves. "This was really created for sledding down hills in the woods," Henry said. "We have a lot of wooded hills around here."
