The Coolest Cats

For nearly 20 years, Mark Abma, a professional big mountain skier living in Pemberton, British Columbia, just north of Whistler, was friends with a family of local skiers and one day he noticed they had an aging hulk of a snowcat rusting away in the weeds behind their garage. It was a strange machine, with a van for a cab, faded orange in color and perched high above four independent tracks, like a tank with four huge paws. A giant kid’s toy brought to life. Intrigued by the possibility of an interesting new way to access backcountry ski runs—normally he rides snowmobiles or catches a ride on a helicopter—Abma would wander over to the yard anytime he could, stare wistfully at the big cat, and wonder what it would take to get the thing running.

The owner explained it was a 1969 Tucker Sno-Cat (the company coined and has a trademark on the name “Sno-Cat”), a tough as nails snow crawler he’d used