Snowcat versus Side by Side for snow grooming

Snow Grooming with Snow Cat

If you have ever been snow cat skiing you may know or understand the places that a snow cat can take you.  Deep powder, steep mountains, and tight places are not a problem for snowcats.  Snowcats can haul lots of gear and people while doing it.

Snow cats have power and lots of track coverage which allows them to float on the snow.  This set of features make it hard to beat as a towing machine for snow grooming.  The steering on a snowcat is almost magical.  They can turn on a dime or in weird ways.  The reason for this is there is not a normal steering wheel.  No brake pads or brakes but you steer them with joysticks or levers and often a slew of buttons. 

Sometimes your great strengths are also a strike against you.  With ultra-light snow groomers we do not think you need all the power, floating, and complexity of a snowcat to lay down great corduroy.  But you still need enough power,  enough track on the snow to do the job.

Snow Cat vs Side by Side

Side by sides are kind of a new phenomenon.  Here are the strengths of side by sides.  Enough power to go lots of places and haul lots of gear.  Not as much as a snowcat but usually plenty to lay great corduroy.  Side by sides has enough track on the snow to go in deep powder.  Again not as much as snowcat but plenty enough to do lots and lots of great snow grooming.  Side by sides drive like a car.  They have a steering wheel.  Four-wheel/track drive so most of us are very familiar with driving something like it. 

A side by side is almost not comparable in turning to a snowcat.  Snowcats just can turn like crazy.  Tracks on a side by side even hurt your turning radius versus when you just have a wheeled version.  We are talking about turning in snow which makes turning even harder.  So if you are comparing turning radius, well no comparison. 

Then there are the additional options you can add to a side by side.

Let’s talk cost. 

 A side by side is not cheap but compared to a snowcat they are very inexpensive.  Even when you have to add tracks to the cost of your side by side.  The power you often get in a snowcat is awesome.  But that power comes at a cost of fuel efficiency.  The side by sides we have used are just far more efficient.  Now you can spend a little on a side by side or a lot.  Depending on things like do you close in your cab and add a windshield.  Adding things like winches. Plows, stereos, and a ton of other cool things.  If you add all these things then well of course then the costs go up.  I am just saying you can spend a lot of money if you want and need it.

Maintaining a side by side even with tracks is lots less expensive than a snowcat.  

Summary

Side by sides with tracks are easy to use, super fun,  you can get them fixed at local dealerships, and are just super fun and affordable when compared to a snowcat.  I am not dishing on snowcats.  They are awesome but for most of us, they are a lot more than you need to do a great job of snow grooming.  You do need to have the right tracks and a reasonably powerful side by side.  There are plenty of options for this.

A few sub notes.

We think that these tracks have been super good for us and work better than a few others we have tried.

Putting a snowplow blade on the front of your larger side by side can be a great advantage when grooming snow.

Windshields surely are nice when grooming and it is snowing.