Guide Gear Snow Racer Sled for Kids and Adults, Heavy Duty, Snow Bike Sled

The media could not be loaded.    Love love love this racer sled. Ordered this for my 10 year old son for Christmas. It took a little while to put it all together. It is like plastic skies attached to a metal frame. But the instructions were easy to follow and it felt really sturdy and well made. All the kids rode on it. It never flipped any one off or flipped over. It was so well balanced I was impressed. My teenager rode it also. He said it felt really safe. It does go really really fast. It has push brakes that dig into the snow when you want to stop. It has a long seat so 2 people can ride it. Adults even got on it. It was holding more than 200 lbs at a time some rides and did great. I have seen these advertised in magazines for over a hundred dollars. This is a fantastic price for how sturdy this is. I would recommend this sled to anyone who wants a fast fun ride. It might be a bit for older kids. My 5 year old couldn't ride it alone and control it. But they rode on it just fine with the older kids. I tried to attach a video of my teenager on it. If it goes through you can see how much fun it is.

My kids, ten and seven, LOVE this thing. It was easy to assemble, so I had my son do it with my supervision. He was able to do it all aside from the final tightening that I did to ensure it was safely done.The front ski has about 1.5" of spring suspension which is cool, as well as a retracting tow rope which is plastic and I'm betting that feature won't last the winter. The whole thing is sturdy, for sure the envy of all the other kids.Plastic and severely cold weather don't often mix well and there are SOME reports of skis breaking, but so far I have had no trouble. I probably wouldn't use this in weather below ten degrees because plastic often gets VERY brittle in single digit and below zero temps- plus, that's just to damned cold. :)Pro tips: Spray the bottom of the skis with furniture polish (wax) and it'll FLY down the hills. If you break a ski- old "real" skis are $10 at garage sale, so if we ever break one I'll put some old downhill skis on it that are cut down to length. I'm almost looking forward to it- it will add more speed and for steering- more control with better edges. Protect that front ski- it seems as if that will be the most likely failure point in a crash.

Bottom Line:This exact sled configuration and exact brand was the exact right purchase for my 3y/o toddler and me to get her started on sledding. Sled configuration feels sturdy and safe and has much smoother than more common plastic sleds. This brand is hundreds of dollars less than comparable sleds made by other brands. The assembly instructions are abysmal, as is alluded to in other reviews. Likewise, the manufacturing (misaligned bolt holes) is definitely not high quality, however, once assembled, it is undoubtedly sturdy. Thankfully you're not assembling a Swiss watch. Even after the assembly, troubleshooting and general pain in the neckness, it's worth every penny.Paul Harvey's $0.02:I knew I wanted to take my daughter sledding, but my daughter isn't one of those "head first let's do this" type kids. She definitely gets up and running like any kid, but, like me, she does best when eased into high sensory input activities. Knowing that, and knowing the saucer or plastic luge experience was a nonstarter, I did a bit of research.So anyway, sleds which are steerable (vs those circular sleds), and which mom/dad can ride along seemed to be the best bet. Sounded pretty intuitive to me. They have those little "on your knees" type sleds which I thought were a bad choice for a few reasons. First, they put the kid in the perfect position to face plant if they hit something. Second, the position of being on your knees seems (to me) to be a position where you're not in good control. A thing which bothers me, and bothers my daughter who didn't even like to be swaddled when she was an infant in the hospital. Also, they don't get going very fast. That last point might sound contradictory considering the other things I've said, but as long as my kiddo gets warmed up, and gets to do something a couple times with mom or dad, she's all in. I wanted something we could let her rip on after we took the training wheels off, so to speak. Also, I'm 6'4" and about 195lbs, and I knew darn well my lanky/bony butt/spine wasn't about to hop on one of those plastic luge type sleds. Plus I only wanted one sled clogging the arteries of my house, not a collection of them. A sled that would do all of the things I mention above is what I was shooting for.So anyway, the steerable ski type sled was one of the few things I could find that seemed to fit the bill. Like I said at the top, this thing is a pain to assemble, but provided you take good care of it, I don't know why it wouldn't last for a lot of years. Certainly longer than an armada of plastic sleds would last you. Plus this thing is comfy, smooth and fast!! Great for kids AND childlike adults.Specific notes on assembly/tips from the trenches:There's a one-star review that was posted on Decmber 15, 2017 which mentions a number of design/manufacturing/assembly issues which I both experienced, and was able to overcome.First is the steering lock issue. That same thing happened to me, but I was far more fortunate than the person who posted that review in that I was at home, in my pajamas, in my basement and on carpet when I locked it in place. Turns out I put the steering column on incorrectly. Bear in mind, I put it on that way the picture in the assembly instructions showed to do it. Honestly, if you purchased this, it worked for you and you didn't have problems, you got lucky.The fix: I removed the steering column (unbolted from the steering wheel and front ski, pulled out from frame), then I rotated it 180 degrees. Worked like a charm. The previously mentioned review was deeeeefinitely correct in that that couldn't be done on the slopes.There's also no mention of putting the little tail end of the spring, which sticks out of the top of that black sleeve (which I recommend you pull down and look inside of just so you can understand what's going on), into a little channel in the frame of the sled. But you should do that. It puts a bit of tension on the steering wheel and helps keep it centered. You'll see what I'm talking about when you get it.Next issue: the pull cord. Aaahhh the pull cord. What a silly design. Lots of stuff posted online about the problems with it. There's more than one problem with it so I won't describe them. I'll just give you the fix.The fix: Don't use it. The cord is really long though, so pull it out as far as you can and cut it as close as you can to the little black box it winds up inside of. It's plenty long to tie it to the frame below the steering wheel and drag the sled along. The downside there is that I have to wind the cord up around my hand before I ride down hill with my daughter, but for the immediate term it's fine. When it becomes a pain or safety concern (for my daughter when she rides alone) I'll figure something else out.Next issue: misaligned bolt holes. Yep. It's a thing. I messed around with that for about 15 minutes before I realized it wasn't me being a wuss. The holes are misaligned, and the bolt doesn't seat perfectly flush to the bottom of the skid. But....it sits flush enough and doesn't obstruct the operation of the sled whatsoever. It was only on the one side, which is how I figured out that it was a problem with the sled and not me.The fix: If it's too bad, you may have to send it back. I'm fairly strong so I was able to make it work. But I think a little patience and more intelligence than I was applying to the situation may have been just as effective.Next issue: sled being too heavy for little kids to pull up the hill. True. But my kid is sooo little she can barely get herself up a big hill. So plastic saucer, plastic luge, feather, propeller blade from the Titanic....no matter what she needs my help at the moment. Personally, again I'm fairly strong, and I also work out from time to time, I didn't feel like pulling the sled was tough at all. Not to mention, I think it's a lot easier for my kid to ride up the hill (and for me to pull her up the hill) on this sled than it would be for her to ride one of those luge type sleds. And I couldn't pull her at all on one of those saucers.The fix: Your kids just need to grow the h#ll up! I jest. Outside of doing more squats and deadlifts, I got nothin'.Side note:When I first searched a couple months prior to Christmas, I found a lot of really thoughtful information out there regarding toddles and sledding. When I searched again, closer to Christmas, the only stuff that came up were those product review type things which seemed to be written by people who went to the Target or product home pages and found the smallest sleds that they carried. Some sites even conflated infant sleds with toddler sleds. Ugh....I digress.

We bought these more than 4 years ago for our boys. Not really normal boys, farm boys. These get used and abused 4 to 5 days a week for the entirely of our long Maine winters. We have nothing else that has worked as well as these or stood up for more than a year. They really enjoy these, they are a bit heavy and we usually pull them back up the very large hill with our snowmobiles. We also usually pack a path for sliding that we keep all winter but boys do they get some distance. We also pull them on these with snowmobiles and they love to be able to pull out beside the sled and not be directly behind it. These are worth the money. They are tough and durable.

We just had the opportunity to take this out for the first time since buying it. We took it to Winter Park, CO and man was it fun! Everyone else at the sledding hill was looking at it enviously and many people asked, where I got it! It seems solid going down the hills and my kids had a blast. It went just about as far as another other sled. We used it on packed snow, which seems to work best. I just hope they carry replacement parts because I'd love to keep this thing around for years should something break at some point.