Spring has once again emerged within the northern hemisphere to close out our winter season and this was certainly the best winter to date for TobogganHills.com.




Thanks to a combination of great snowfall and media attention (thank you CBC Radio, The Globe and Mail, and Hamilton Spectator), the site’s traffic grew over 200% and has now 240 hill locations worldwide!





As always, my heartfelt thanks goes out to all of the contributors of toboggan hills and those participating in the community to make the site an awesome success.

As well to the advertised sled manufacturers who offered us a variety of great sleds to test and donate to children of families that are less fortunate and couldn't afford sleds of their own.

If you have any comments, suggestions as to how yet to improve the site, or would like to discuss supplying articles, sled samples, or advertising, please don't hesitate to contact me.

There are still more great plans for TobogganHills.com in the coming next winter 2013/2014 season.

So keep those sleds ready and hope for tons of snow!   :)

This coming Wednesday, March 20th marks the First Day of Spring.

Snow cover across North America from February 2-9, 2002.

X Games Snow Moto

If you remember the GT Sno-racer from the 1980's then the Snow Moto would be its modern little cousin.

Sporting a front-end suspension, good steering, brakes, and twin tip skis, this little speedster provides a comfortable ride and control to make it down most any hill.

It also has a towrope with a built-in docking station to allow for dragging the sled back up the hill.

I will stress that this sled is definitely for the little ones, because it has a seat clearly designed for 4-year olds.  Which is fine because they really enjoyed it.



Ratings
(1 = not ideal -to- 5 = Awesome)

Comfort: 4  (not made for grown-up's though)
Control: 5
Speed: 3.5
Portability: 3
Price: 1



X Games 50" Summit Surfer

When you can’t get your hands on a legit snowboard, the Summit Surfer sled could be the next best thing.

It’s a combination design of a simple snowboard and a general sled for sitting on.  As well it has a ribbed bottom texture for enhanced traction control and steering.



The sled is very lightweight and its construction material feels like some rubbery, flexible foam type and provides great padding for sitting on, which made for a very comfortable ride.

In the snowboarding position though, I found the surface texture too slippery for my boots to securely stay in the straps.  So it limited my ride in that respect.

But sitting down worked very well and provided a fun trip down the hill.



Ratings
(1 = not ideal -to- 5 = Awesome)

Comfort: 4.5
Control: 2.5
Speed: 3.5
Portability: 4
Price: 3

If you want the best combination of comfort, speed, and a thrilling fun ride, then it's worth investing in a genuine snow tube.

The fine folks at Tube Pro Inc. in Waterloo, Ontario have built a good business in supplying local ski resorts with industrial grade snow tubes.  The bonus is that they also offer these tubes for retail shoppers as well.

Using a portable air compressor I inflated the tube up in about 10 minutes. 




Don't be fooled kids, this is a sizable sledding device.  So be sure your SUV has room in the back for it.

And it's got some good weight to it as well.  Bringing it back up the hill will require a lot more energy compared to a regular toboggan.

Thankfully this snow tube comes with a large pulling strap so that you can simply drag it back up.

This is an immensely fun ride and other people on the hill were eager to try it out too.

It absorbs the bumps on frozen snow and the more weight you get on it, the faster and farther you travel.  So be sure to choose a hill with a long run off at the bottom, because there are no steering controls here.



Ratings
(1 = not ideal -to- 5 = Awesome)

Comfort: 5
Control: 1  (but that's what makes it fun!)
Speed: 4.5
Portability: 2
Price: 1

It's been a decent winter around here near Toronto, and with it I've been given the chance to try out some new sleds.


Enter the Zipfy Mini Luge

Zipfy (pronounced as Zip'fee) is a Canadian designed, unique sled that is suitable for all ages from about 3+ years old and offers a speedy ride with good control and reasonable comfort.



One important note in its style of riding is that your legs must be elevated to avoid interfering with your speed.  This is easy enough if the hill you are on is as smooth as a newly paved road.  But with most hill rides bouncing you around, my legs would clip the ground and shoot snow in my face as I whipped downhill.



But by the same token, it's also these same forward legs that enable for great breaking power.  Leaning into different angles allowed for some steering, but only if you had enough powder snow to do it in.  On a frozen and hard packed snow base, the sled shot you downhill in a fairly straight line.

Another benefit is its lightweight.  Which anyone can easily carry back up to the top of the hill.


Ratings
(1 = not ideal -to- 5 = Awesome)

Comfort: 4
Control: 3
Speed: 3.5
Portability: 5
Price: 4


It's fun, fast, and different.  You can get your own from their online store.

Now you can view and share updates of the snow conditions on your favourite hills.

To update the snow conditions on any hill, simply log in and go to your desired hill to input the star rating:



Once the snow conditions have been updated by a user, the map will highlight the markers for the hills that have new snow conditions.





Snow condition updates eventually expire after a certain amount of hours to ensure it stays up-to-date.

Now you can check the site for any recent snow conditions update before travelling to that hill.