North Legion’s SMX “extreme sports device”

Various European freeride luminaries have launched a new “extreme sports device” at Saalback Hinterglemm, Austria. The North Legion SMX is a three-ski, full suspension snowbike thing. There’ve been plenty of snowbikes before, but apparently the SMX is different in all sorts of important ways. Not least of those is that it’s been designed with ski lifts (including drag lifts) in mind.

The other key difference is, we’re told, the “suspended parallel motion frame”. Rather than just relying on the steerable front ski for turning, leaning the SMX over causes the rear skis to angle themselves into an appropriate carving position just as a skier would. All the skis are twin-tipped so the SMX can be ridden (or landed) backwards.

“The SMX is a real cool thing”, said Trond Hansen (who’s Norwegian – we’re dealing with a fairly broad definition of “Europe” here). “It is pretty much like riding a motocross or mountain bike on snow, but way more stable.”

Obviously the main obstacle to the takeup of something like this is getting it adopted by ski resorts – it’s no good it being ski-lift friendly if you’re not allowed to take it on any lifts. But Saalbach Hinterglemm, venue for the Adidas Slopestyle MTB freeride event, will be the first ski resort to open an SMX test centre. You’ll have to wait until December, though. That’ll coincide with the Adidas Slopestyle Winter Edition, run on SMXes.