Weekend of snowmobile races kicks off in Yellowknife

Some kids in the Northwest Territories got their first taste of snowmobile racing this weekend during the Race on the Great Lake in Yellowknife.

5-year old Kayla Bromley was one many kids racing for the first time. She started snowmobiling earlier this year. Her father, Mitch Bromley, said they signed her up on a whim. 

"Just saw the races and thought we'd give 'er," he said.

This weekend's festivities mark the third event since Race on the Great Lake began. Races are taking place on Great Slave Lake near Con Mine.

The event started on Saturday morning, and will run until the early evening on Sunday. Over the course of the weekend, there will be more than 30 racing categories in a number of age ranges, many of them with cash prizes.

The kids events are first, and they're a lot more relaxed than some of the bigger races.

"Kids come from lots of different experience levels," event organizer Hayley Frost explained.

'We have kids who've got to have their parents at the end telling them to 'come this way', we have other kids that are going to hold it to the bar." 

Miller Charest, 8, raced this year for the second time, and he said he was racing to win. Miller first started driving a snowmobile by himself last year, but he has been riding with his parents for years.

"He has been practicing all month," his mother Jaime Miller said.  "He has a little Yamaha 250 that we [have] pretty much redone, so he's pretty excited about that."

Like many of the parents who came out to support their kids, Miller is a snowmobiling enthusiast herself. "It's a family thing," she said.

Barrett Blythe, 8, was competing at the event for the first time, in the 120 cc snowmobile category. He has been snowmobiling since he was four years old, and said that practicing racing is his favourite way to snowmobile. 

It's something organizer Hayley Frost enjoys seeing. She has been involved with the event since it started, and she says the reason she keeps doing it, despite all of the challenges in getting the event organized and making sure it runs smoothly, is her own snowmobile-loving kid, aged 14.

"For all of my adult years, I have been involved with snowmobiling," she said. "But really we do this because our son really enjoys the sport, and we want to make sure that he has races in his hometown."