There was a slight chill on Lake Nipissing as the deafening sound of revving engines echoed across the beach in spurts. A racer was prepping his snowmobile, custom-built to hit top speeds that would leave a car in the dust—or in this case, snow and ice.
Another rev of the engine, plumes of exhaust billowing from the machine. Another rev and the crowd gets silent in anticipation. He gets the all-clear and before anybody can register, the engine screams a high-pitched whine, the nose lifts, and the vehicle rockets off down the quarter-mile track just off Sunset Park.
When the racer disappears from sight, people shoot their glance at the speed gauge as the numbers climb to 170 miles per hour. A strong time.
For another winter the North Bay Snowmobile Speed Runs have dominated the lake on Sunset Beach Saturday and Sunday.
Speed Runs owner Claude Levasseur said he’s been organizing the events every year since 2002 but has been an avid racer since 1995.
“I got into it because of the adrenaline rush,” he said. “But now I’m too big to drive, so I’m all about the kids.” He motioned to the very young racers mounted on their tiny snowmobiles, prepared to dart off into the distance. He also pointed to his own son, grown-up, and racing, preparing their custom blue machine.
“It’s about getting lots of horsepower and lots of money to build these,” he said, talking about how to get the fastest times. “The fastest we’ve had today so far was 174.6 mph—which is about 300 kilometers per hour.”
Levasseur said these events bring quite the outside crowd as well, with racers coming from across the province, as south as Toronto, as east as Ottawa and further from Quebec, and even racers as far down as the States.
“We’ve done about 500 runs in a day before,” he said. “And we have 36 classes for people to sign up in, so it keeps the times pretty fair.”
The next event in North Bay will be on March 4 and 5, 2017 on Lake Nipissing.