It was quite the adventure to travel into the Adirondack Mountains this passed weekend. Arriving on Friday to come shoot an event happening at Big Moose Lake on Saturday. I read a lot of promotions about this event and I was expecting to see well over 100 snowmobiles racing.   1st stop was the Big Moose Inn where it was stated on the event's Facebook page that testing was going on and there was an expectation for a great turnout on Saturday. 

See all images taken this weekend in the Adirondacks:   CLICK HERE

As I arrived at the Big Moose Inn, (which is a great place by the way) I was a bit shocked at how few people were there. I spoke with the owner of the INN to confirm  the start time for Saturday's event. I was told 11:00 AM. It is my understanding that the event is not actually put on by the Big Moose Inn they only host it, there is a separate organizer for the event itself.  Not much was happening Friday night so off to the cabin I went to prep my equipment for the next day.

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On Saturday upon arriving at the course, there were snowmobiles everywhere! I thought this was a good sign until I learned just how many were actually there to race. One person close to the event stated there were approximately 55 registered entries. While making my way through the crowd out on the lake in my Dodge 3500, I was stopped and asked to pull out a guy's truck who had got stuck in the snow, a friend of the organizer of the event I was later told.  No problem, we hooked a strap on it and pulled it right out... I am sure someone would have done the same for me had I got stuck. 

By this time 11AM came and went.  This event did not go off until after 12:30 PM.  On the plus side, the fast ones ended up in the first few heats... 

​As the day went on I simply lost  interest. It seemed there was too much time between heats. 

I came to this event to see how well organized it was, having been asked to cover this event back in the Fall, I initially agreed. I later decided it was in my best interest not to commit to this event this year until I saw the event first hand. I gave plenty of notice to the organizer so he had enough time to find someone else to commit to what he needed done.

Quite the shock came just after the 3rd or 4th heat. The organizer came to me and told me to stop taking video. All the spectators around me were puzzled at why he was telling me to stop shooting video. As to not cause a scene, I agreed to put the video cameras away. Not that I needed to, but at the rate the heats were going I just was not interested in shooting the video at this point.  

Video Cams all packed away and keeping warm, I continued to shoot stills as the heats continued. The organizer then comes back asking what I was doing? I stated I was shooting stills for myself.  Needless to say he wanted me to stop that too.  Well, after traveling 6 hours to get there I was not going home with empty cards.  He seemed to have forgotten that he was on a public lake. His event or not, he cannot stop someone from shooting it. There was no ticketed admission to a gated area and this certainly is not NASCAR.  Besides the fact, I was apparently the only person asked to do so while many others lined the track shooting their stills and their video and I did not see him say anything to them. 

With just a $20 entry fee for racers, my first instinct was how could this possibly be professionally run ?  Out of $1,100 in entry fees, not quite sure how they can pay people to work the event that  I know are not volunteers... ???

It is quite unfortunate that just this one individual from the organization (Andrew) left me walking way from this event and never looking back.

Rather than embrace the 3 additional cameras capturing his event that he did not have to pay to get there, he wanted to shut them down.  He could have seized the opportunity to perhaps use my footage as well as what he was getting from some of the others.  No big deal.  It gave me a little more incentive to come to the Adirondacks. After less than 90 minutes shooting at the event, I found myself packing up the equipment and headed off to my first real Snowmobiling experience for the rest of the weekend with some great friends. 

From the photos I got throughout this entire trip and the 2 days of snowmobiling on the lakes and through the trails, it will be a weekend I will forever remember.  The Big Moose Event was just a bump in the trail and like anything else you just move on and learn from it...

See all images taken this weekend in the Adirondacks:   CLICK HERE