On October 6-8, 2000 the "Big East Snowmobile Show" (BESS) slid into Syracuse, New York. While Minnesota has the Haydays grass drags to mark the official start of winter, in the northeast it's the BESS. This is the fifth year that the show has been held in Syracuse. The show consists of new sled displays from all the manufactures big and small, trailers, trailer accessories, performance products, traction products, videos, various snowmobile clubs and organizations from as far away as Yellowstone National Park and the Gaspe region of Quebec… and the clothing bargains, oh man!!!

If you needed snowmobile clothing and you didn't go to the Big East Show, you're paying too much money. Due to the lackluster season of the past year, there were many vendors selling last years clothing at ridiculous prices. I picked up a $205 Reima jacket (1999 MSRP, but still a new jacket) for $50. You can't beat that with a frozen drive belt!! Even if you don't ride a sled, you can't beat a great winter jacket for $50. It was such a good deal I bought two of them! The Shade Tree display is always one with some good deals. Friday night you had to wait in line to get into the display.

This year I had the opportunity to participate in the show by working in the booth for a Quebec snowmobile club, the "Association motoneigistes Vallée de la Nation (AMVN)". In English, they are also known as "Nation Valley Snowmobile Club". More on this club later in the story.

With Syracuse being just minutes from the famous "Tugg Hill Plateau" region of New York State, the upstate New York area is heavily populated with snowmobilers and it seems like they all turn out for this show. The show opened on Friday night from 5-10pm. At 9pm there was still a line of people at the ticket window to get into the show.

The last few years of the BESS has seen vendor attendance drop off, no doubt in correlation with the previous year’s poor snow season but this year things are looking up. The show was completely sold out of vendor space using up 3 floors of the Oncenter Convention Center. I lost count after 60 as I cruised the show to see how many vendor displays there were, and to check out what was new and exciting. The attendance figures were in the 10s of thousands. I was not able to get a final tally. All I can tell you is that at times, it was literally elbow to elbow in the isles.

Naturally the majority of the floor space at the show was taken up by the big 4 sled manufactures. I snapped some digital photos of the most popular sleds. Bombardier was showing off their MXZ800, Arctic Cat was all hyped up on their ZR800, Polaris had an interesting sled on a raised podium... it was an Indy Classic outfitted from the factory with an M10, looked like the kind of machine you could ride for hours without getting a sore arse. The new 800 twins from both Ski-Doo and Arctic Cat look like they were fitted with an exhaust pipe big enough for a diesel truck and a muffler that could easily stow a pair of 12" subwoofers!!

FAST was there with a couple of Blades on display, always a crowd around the sleds. Not much new to report. They're still trick looking, they still use a Polaris twin, they're still very expensive. Does anybody actually own one of these????

Redline also had 2 sleds on display and in my unofficial survey, each time I made a walk about the show, there were more people at the Redline display than at the FAST display. Maybe because Redline is even more reclusive than FAST?? I watched the Redline sled get picked up by the rear bumper... It was lifted a full 12" before the track ever came off the ground. Is there a point of diminishing returns on suspension travel??? The Redline machine is a really tricked out looking sled.

Scorpion had a sled on display within 10 yards of Redline. It was not getting nearly the attention of FAST or Redline. Sorry to say but it just looks too much like a "normal" sled to garner much attention at a show like this.

This year there was a representative from every region of Quebec. At the booth I worked in (representing www.amvn.qc.ca), we had a lot of traffic from people asking about riding in Quebec. After the last few winters of mostly lousy riding conditions I've found myself doing more and more riding in Quebec. From Syracuse to the region I ride in it's a 4 to 4-1/2 hour drive to the best trails in the northeasten US and Canada. The Nation Valley Snowmobile Club won the provincial prize known as "Blizz'Or" for the best quality and security on it's trails for 1998 and were finalists for "Best Snowmobile Club in Quebec" for 2000. While I live and ride in upstate New York, admittedly, like thousands of others who ride the Tug Hill region of New York State, I got tired of hundreds of sleds and hundreds of moguls on the weekends. The clubs on Tug Hill do what they can to battle nature and an overwhelming number of machines but they simply cannot match the favorable weather conditions and sled traffic that you will find in Quebec. During the three day long show I conducted an informal poll of people that stopped by the booth. Eighty percent of the people that stopped at the booth had previously ridden in Quebec. Of them, ninety percent said they would ride there again this year.

I made a second informal poll of where people were from. I found that on Friday night, 70% of the people surveyed were from an area within an hour drive of Syracuse. On Saturday and Sunday however, 64% of the people surveyed were from more than an hour away. Many people coming from as far as Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut and I even spoke to a guy from Texas. Yes, I said Texas ! He came to town for the Syracuse University football game. He didn't know what a snowmobile was so he came to the show to find out. There is one flyer in every statistical sample!!

Mark your calendar for next year, the first weekend in October. Big East Snowmobile Show 2001 will be returning to Syracuse. The show is already just about booked for vendor space.

If you need to stock up on supplies, clothes, oil, studs, belts, whatever, it's at the Big East Snowmobile Show at prices you won't find once the snow starts to fly !!!!!

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