The 2017 Winter X Games descended upon Aspen, Colorado last month for the 15th consecutive year. Top action-sports athletes from around the world gathered to compete in a number of the usual skiing and snowboarding competitions, but there was a new event that drew all the buzz this year.
Dubbed “Snow BikeCross,”this intense and nerve-racking event sends riders out onto a course filled with large jumps and bowl turns atop a machine that is part dirt bike and part snowmobile. The start of the race is pure chaos as all 16 riders speed off at the drop of the gate. You can a great feel of how wild this race begins via helmet camera footage here.
The machines have technically been around in some variation for over 75 years, as seen in The Orchard’s 2015 release of Trax: The Evolution of Snow Bikes. They remained a tiny niche activity in snow covered forests until surfacing at the X Games, the biggest action-sports stage of the them all. It’s amazing to see how these machines have come from a basic concept to the premier event for ESPN.
Anytime there is an inaugural event, the great unknown is what drives all the attention. How is this all going to play out? After the checkered flag was waived, Brock Hoyer won the first ever Snow BikeCross event and his first ever X Games gold medal.
You can check out all the action from the Snow BikeCross main event here provided by ESPN. Snow Bikes can also be seen in featured films distributed by The Orchard including, 509 Film’s Vol. 11, Sledecks 19 and even in a section of Moto 8: The Movie.
It’s safe to say the Snow Bike boom is for real!
