March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Use of old-fashioned sleds reaches new `cresta’ > Lugelike device fast and flexible

SOUTH BERWICK — Come each winter, Halley is a comet.

Halley Glenn, 11, streaks across the snow on “Big Red,” the first racing sled to make the 8-mile run nonstop from the top of New Hampshire’s Mount Washington down its twisting Auto Road to the valley floor.

The wooden sled was built by her father, Michael. From a small barn that is his workshop and office here, Michael Glenn is fighting to bring to the United States a winter sport found only in Europe: racing old-fashioned-style sleds with no moving parts, whose drivers lie flat and face forward — like children on American Flyers — down slippery slopes at 50 and 60 miles per hour.

Already, Glenn’s Agamenticus Cresta Association — “cresta,” he said, is the word for sleds piloted in this fashion — has a series of four races planned this winter in New England and New York. On a hill in Claremont, N.H., there is sledding and instruction every weekend. And Glenn is approaching ski areas about establishing trails where families or competitors could take to the slopes and the ski areas could add yet another layer to their winter business.

Glenn and Rick Harford, both 43, build the sleds in a 16-by-24-foot barn set back from a dirt road in this small town. Their company name conjures the forceful fuel used to power their sleds: Gravity Gear.

Glenn, a downhill skier with the need for speed, said he turned to sledding “after I blew out both my knees and had them operated on.” Now, he gets his kicks on a cresta that he warned “is not your little brother’s sled.”

“These are about speed and maneuverability,” he said as he stood among sleds either under construction or ready for shipping.

And as he described operating one, he sounded as much sports car racer as streaker over snow and ice.

“You’re 6 inches off the ground going 50, 60 miles an hour,” Glenn said. “I’ve hit 70 on a straight run.”

He talked of 180-degree hairpin turns at 30 mph; 90-degree and S-turns at 40 and 50.

He talked of the strategy of racing: five and six sleds hurtling in a sizzling chain, all trying to pass one another. Run in the track of the sled ahead of you, like drafting in an auto race, he said. Catch them, and as you come out of a turn, use the G-force generated in the turn to blast by them on the way out, like a race car accelerating out of a corner.

To protect himself, Glenn wears a helmet, goggles and elbow pads, the latter for tilting turns that drag the inside arm along the ice and snow. To control speed or stop, racers wear iron teeth like rakes on their toes.

Last year on a run down the auto road, one club member swerved to avoid a cross-country skier who had strayed onto a closed trail and slid down a steep embankment but was not hurt. Glenn said this is the closest any club member has come to any kind of injury.

The Agamenticus club (named after a nearby mountain) has members from all over the country and is one of two cresta associations in the world. The other is in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Sledding there, however, is on a different kind of sled and different kind of course. In Switzerland, they use double-steel runners and race down tracks, much as with a luge or bobsled.

American racers use ski slopes, mountain trails and mountain roads. And their sleds are different, owing to the design and craftsmanship of Glenn and Harford.

Most are made of native ash. For the broad runners, the ash is laminated with carbon fiber. It is glued with an epoxy that is flexible to 200 degrees below zero.

The “seat” on which operators lie is ash, as are the struts and sidepoles. The bottoms of the runners are capped with Lexan, a tough, flexible polycarbonate.

A racing version of the sled has a fiberglass seat and aircraft aluminum sidepoles.

“The first one we built was pretty rough,” Glenn said as he hauled it out. “We built it in an afternoon.” And it is rough — no laminations, a beer-barrel look to the wood.

“But friends started seeing it and they all wanted one,” Glenn said of that 1989 effort. “We got better at it, and here we are today.”

Today, the ash sleds sell for around $500, while the high-tech racing version, complete with custom graphics, goes for around $800. A membership in the club comes with every sled. So far, about 60 have been sold.

These are the sleds that will race this winter at Wilmington, N.Y., on Whiteface Mountain, near Lake Placid; Mount Ascutney in Brownsville, Vt.; Black Mountain in Jackson, N.H.; and, it is hoped, Sunday River in Newry.

In addition, Phil Haynes, a pioneering hang glider and now a cresta enthusiast, has opened his hill, Morningside Park in Claremont, N.H., to other club members. On a hill where hang gliders from around the world have gathered to catch the famous updrafts of the Connecticut River Valley, sledders now gather for darting down slides on snow.

Glenn is also planning a big test for his design: Pike’s Peak, a drop of 11,000 feet on a 12-mile course. He is confident the sleds will hold up.

“These sleds will last forever; they’re virtually unbreakable,” he said, and then demonstrated by taking a runner not yet attached to a sled and stepping on its curled front, flattening it with no damage. It sprang immediately back into shape.

Flexibility is important, because the bend and twist of torque is what steers the sled. The driver holds the upturned tip of the front of each runner and pushes one down while pulling up on the other to turn. For instance, a left turn means pulling up on the left runner while pushing down on the right.

“It torques the whole sled. It’s all spring and torque,” said Glenn.

Learning the spring and the torque comes to club members at clinics before races or at Claremont. Sledders are rated as “Flakes,” with a 1-Flake being a beginner and a 5-Flake an expert. A 3-Flake is qualified to race, and a 5-Flake can handle any terrain under any conditions, said Glenn, but added, “They also have to have the smarts to know where they shouldn’t go and when they shouldn’t go.”

The sleds come user-friendly, Glenn said, because newer, sharper runners actually are slower — while sharpness provides bite and control, it slows the sleds down.

“As you use it a lot, it gets faster and faster and faster,” he said. And presumably operators get better and better and better.

“You could say it’s got a built-in learning curve,” Glenn said, laughing.


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