Most of the sled trails around town are well packed. Most people have sleds and drive them to work and to get groceries so there's lots of traffic. The temp stays below freezing from November 'till May so we don't get the freeze thaw like you do down south that can soften things up. The snow here is very fine and the wind can pack it hard like concrete. I usually wait a couple of days after a fresh snowfall before I head out so the sleds can beat it down. Fortunately, it's so cold most of the winter that there's no moisture in the air and it can't snow. If I'm not on a good trail I'll sink and end up pushing, so I stick mostly to the well travelled ones. On a good day I barely leave a tire track.
Now to answer your question about the snow I'll be racing on, it's not going to be very well packed since there is not much traffic over it. I tried heading across the bay last night and it was very soft. That's because on the bay the sledders split up looking for a fresh line, there's no single trail. Once they get across the bay though, the trail through the mountains is usually a single track and a lot better.
The tire does stick through the ski a couple of inches and I do loose speed when it digs in but I don't go over the bars and that's the idea.
The studs only help on ice or very hard packed slick spots. Every fall I always end up driving in the snow for a few weeks with no studs until the trails get too polished or wear down to bare ice. When I get tired of falling off I order some studs and screw 'em in. I'm gettin' lazy and now I only use 5/8" long screws in the front and 3/4" in the rear. They're not long enough to poke the tube when your tire is fairly new and it's an easy job, couple of hours. When I was ice racing and needed extreme traction it used to take a couple of days to build the tires. First you take a new rear tire and measure the inside circumference by sticking tape to the inside center of the tire. Then you take the loop of tape you made and go through your piles of used road race tires until you found one that the tape loop would fit perfectly around the outside. Then you cut the sidewalls out of the street tire so it'll fit properly and try to stuff it inside the knobby. You usually have to beat the last little bit in with a sledge hammer, and warming the rubber over a wood stove helps a lot. Like most things in life, the tighter it fits inside the better. Then you take more tape and measure the inside of the tire you just beat in and go and find another one that will fit inside that one. Cut the sidewalls, beat it in, measure that one and find and jam a third one in. Then you take your rim locks and store them 'till next summer 'cause there's no way you're getting them in. There's barely enough room for the tube. Heat the whole assembly to near melting point over the wood stove and you and your buddies sweat and curse for a couple of hours until the tubes in and tire is beaded. Then you start the whole procedure over for the front tire but usually only stuff in 2 street liners. Studding the front tire after all this is done is pretty easy. You take the longest studs you can without poking the tube and run them straight in through all the layers of rubber. Usually only 1 stud per knob. Using long studs through the thick rubber is very important 'cause the studs and knobs can't flex. With short studs in the knobs only, the knobs bend under pressure and rubber touches instead of steel.
The rear is more complicated. Straight up traction is easy but you need to be on a rail in the turns to be competitive. You mount the wheel assembly back on the bike and lean it over to your best guess of your normal lean angle in the turns. Then you start the engine with the bike on a stand and pop it in gear. With the tire spinning you use a large wood door plane to shave rubber and make a flat spot on the tire at that lean angle. Plane a bit, lean the bike, plane some more, check some more until you have a flat spot in the profile of the tire that puts lots of studs on the ice while you're powering through the turns. Then you start screwing in the 2"1/2 screws using a pattern that has been perfected over the years. Several studs per knob and angled backwards a bit. Angling the studs backward gives you better acceleration traction but less off the gas traction. As long as you're on the gas you're locked in. If you back off halfway through a turn you have your own private little race going on, the back tire trying to pass the front tire.
The long stud setup on clean pure ice with no snow is probably the best traction you'll ever feel. I road raced and ice raced a Honda 600 hurricane and I could lean the bike over farther on the ice without falling off than I could on the road course with fresh rubber. As soon as you hit a bit of snow though, the tires sort of hydroplane, the studs loose contact and the traction is gone.
When I made the trip to Kimmirut a couple of years ago I originally was testing to see if I could make it across the bay, about 25 kilometers. I knew that would be the softest part and if I could make it I was going to plan the trip for the next weekend. The trip across the bay was brutal and once I hit the other shore it felt so good to hit solid trail again that I blasted along for awhile just for a rest. The trail was great and I figured conditions would never be better so I decided to try and make it all the way. There are 8 tiny, about 6 foot by 8 foot, shelters along the way, spaced about every 1/2 hour. Two friends were with me on sleds and we stopped at the 2nd cabin and I sprung the idea on them. They headed back to town to get fuel and warm gear and emergency supplies since we had nothing with us. They left me about 4 PM. I figured they'd be gone 3 hours tops. At 11 they still weren't back and I was out in the middle of nowhere in total darkness and freezing. There was a candle in the cabin but I didn't even have a match to light it with. I thought something might have happened and they might not be back 'till morning, and I wasn't going to try to make it back by myself in the dark and low on fuel. I found some tinfoil in the garbage and wrapped it around my feet to warm them up but that didn't work. I sized up the little doorway and thought I may be able to stuff the bike through it. The bottom of the doorway is 2 feet off the ground to help stop snow from blocking it closed so it was quite the mission. Then when the back tire was almost in the front tire hit the far wall. the bike was longer than the cabin. The back tire was hanging over the threshold trying to roll the bike back outside and I wrestled the front wheel up on a bunk and got it sideways enough to fit. Then I took the tinfoil and rolled up a little pipe to slip over the exhaust and stick out a vent hatch. I started the engine and had light and the cabin warmed up and was balmy in a few minutes. Immediately the other two show up at the door with sleeping bags and propane heaters and said "are you insane, get that f'n thing outta here." It probably took me an hour to get it in and set up and they dragged it out about 5 minutes later. But they did bring grub and stuff so I didn't complain and we set up camp and spent the night. The next morning we headed out for Kimmirut. I was in the lead and about 1/2 hour into the ride I started sinking in soft snow and was coming up to a big hill. This was before I had the ski so going over the bars was a constant worry. I pinned the gas and sat way back on the fender to try to build up speed for the hill and keep the front end light. It worked and I got lots of speed, but there was a big rock just beneath the snow right in the middle of the trail near the top. The front tire skipped right over it but the rear was digging in deep and slammed into the rock. I was on the pegs at the time and the seat came up and slapped me in the ass and I was ejected like a bad guy from James Bond's passenger seat. I went for a nice little fly but the snow landing was nice and soft. The bike didn't fare out quite so well. The rim was bent (and still is) but the tire didn't go flat. This was one with all the liners and all the rubber probably saved it. I tried to spin the tire to see how bad the wobble was but it wouldn't move. I thought the axle was bent or something bad. I loosened the rear axle nut and the tire shot forward. I didn't notice but the impact had driven the wheel all the way back in the swingarm to the end of the chain adjustment. The chain was so tight the tire wouldn't turn. I re-adjusted things and drove a bit to test the wheel. It was a little wobbly but the snow made things not seem so bad and we decided to keep going. The worst thing was the rear fender snapped off and now everytime I leaned back to unload the front tire, there was a pile of studs spinnin' under my butt. The rest of the trip was un-eventful and we had lunch in Kimmirut and made it home by dark.
Everybody here gives me a hard time about riding the bike in the snow, especially since the night I got lost. That just gives me all the more reason to keep slippin' and slidin'.
Man, my fingers are cramping up. I was getting so into this I didn't realize how much I was babbling away. Is anybody still reading or are you yacking away on lurker's site.
Here's a pic of one of my buddies who came with me on his sled.
