B
I have had both a Yeti and a Timbersled for over a month, and I have done a lot of riding on both now so I decided I would share some of my experiences. I didn’t really plan to do a review, but I remember when I was researching both kits how frustrating it was to try to make a decision based on comments and reviews that either had a clear bias or has very little actual testing time. This is my PERSONAL review from the point of view of one rider, so I do not expect my experiences to exactly mirror what other riders will find due to different riding styles, weights, conditions, etc.
Background information:
- 75 kg rider
- Changed from sledding to snowbiking in 2015
- Around 20 hours saddle time on each kit. Probably closer to 30 on the timbersled.
- Both kits are on a YZ450FX.
- My girlfriend rides one of the bikes, so I am able to switch fairly freely between the kits on the same conditions, and usually swap 4 -5 times per ride.
- I have gotten to experience pretty much all conditions in the last month, but primarily tree-riding in powder
- No association with either brand
- The Yeti is the 129” track. The timbersled is the 120” track with TSS. Despite the difference between the track lengths, this is the “all-around, do anything” kit from each company so I think is the best comparison. Having ridden a 137” timbersled, I think that the timbersled has to be a bit shorter to compare properly to the yeti due to different weights and construction. (Side-note on the 137” timbersled, I HATED it. Felt like I had a brick tied to my *** compared to the 120” and was not fun at all. May be better for heavier riders, but had way too much junk in the trunk for me)
A note on testing bias:
In any testing environment, people will have a tendency to look for and find what they are expecting to find due to either preconceived notions or outside influence. I am not immune to this. An example would be my second ride out on the yeti, and first time hitting good powder on the yeti, I was amazed how much I was floatation I had and how much track speed I could get compared to the timbersled. After riding around having a blast on the new kit for a while, I looked over and noticed…. the girlfriend was riding the yeti and I was actually still on the timbersled.
After this, I did as much testing as I could “double-blind”, so I did not know what kit I was riding and had to figure it out for myself based on the performance. This was virtually impossible to do on packed/groomed trail since the kits have a different sound on the trail and the ski is visible, but for most of the other riding I was able do a large amount of double blind testing since the bikes are identical other than the kits.
Climbing:
I am going to start by comparing the climbing capability, even though it is not very high on the priority list for me, but it is the least subjective and also seems to have exaggerated importance for many people (probably due to carryover of the “highmarking” mentality from sledding, which to me doesn’t matter much when snowbiking). I have tried a lot of testing on the exact same hills with both of the kits, and in most cases the yeti had a significant advantage over the timbersled, both when bombing straight up the hill and when sidehilling to get to the top. In the harder snow or snow that has a base, there is usually only a difference of a couple bike lengths, but in light, bottomless powder the yeti absolutely dominates, sometimes climbing nearly double the distance up the same hill.
The timbersled does have a couple advantages though. First, on hills that have a lot of bumps, or where the snow is not as soft, the timbersled seems to glide over the obstacle better, while the yeti seems to launch off a bit and then dig in a bit on landing. There is a pipeline hill on one of my rides that is often quite windblown and has a bunch of cross-ditching, and the timbersled comes over the top faster than the yeti since it seems to handle the ditches better without losing speed. For the riding I do though, this is an exception, and once I get back to the better snow where things start to matter the yeti is much better. The second thing I find with the timbersled is that it is easier to bail out of a hill when you know you aren’t going to make it without getting stuck. The timbersled seems a bit more willing to compress in the right spots allowing you to lift the ski out of the snow and flick it in a direction where you want, while the yeti has to bail out a bit more gradually since the ski sometimes doesn’t lose tractability when you want it to. I believe both of these advantages are solely due to the TSS shock, since the 2015 ST120 kit I have with the fixed strut does not do either of these things nearly as well.
The ski:
This category is extra important since the ski is low enough cost that many people are willing to run the best ski even if they are running a different kit. The yeti ski has a bigger surface area which allows it to float noticeably better, and even more importantly, pop out of the snow after a hard landing. The yeti ski also has a skag configuration that allows for a lot more bite when turning, while the timbersled doesn’t bite nearly as much and can feel a bit washy. I would actually say that the yeti ski could be dialed back a bit in terms of how much it bites. In car terms I would say that the timbersled ski understeers a lot, while the yeti ski oversteers a small amount. Here is a breakdown based on condition:
Trail: Here is where the yeti ski excels, and allows cornering to be much more confident and less jittery. I also feel more comfortable on the yeti ski at high speeds, even on straight stretches.
Powder: Yeti ski is preferred, but I only notice it much at slower speeds (second gear) or when jumping. In third gear and above, I notice very little difference between the skis in powder.
Crusty/Windblown: I actually prefer the timbersled ski here since the yeti ski bites too much, and if the top layer is hard and all three skags are in the snow, it can be very hard to turn properly.
Wet/heavy: Skis are roughly equal here, but I found myself having to get used to the yeti ski while travelling at high speeds through heavy snow since sometimes it would turn more than I expected it to, and I had to be leaned over a bit more than on the timbersled to compensate.
If I had to design my own ski, it would be the same floatation as the yeti, with a bite somewhere in between the skis (but leaning towards the yeti ski).
One other thing I noticed is the timbersled ski has a center skag that juts down fairly abruptly and is prone to grabbing on logs. I think this could be easily solved without reducing performance, and I think this would reduce injuries and/or bike damage.
Trail riding:
While it is not the fun part of most rides, and I generally try to plan around minimizing the amount of time I am on the trail, making the ride to the powder as comfortable as possible is important to me. As mentioned above, the yeti ski is a fairly substantial improvement on the trail. However, I found the timbersled skid to be preferred on the trail, especially for rough trail. The dirtbike pivot of the timbersled makes a huge difference here, and I found the yeti skid would often bounce when I didn’t want it to, leading to an out of control feeling at higher speeds. I believe the better feeling of the timbersled kit is primarily due to the TSS. My 2015 timbersled with the fixed strut was very bouncy in the back end.
I found that modifying the yeti recommendation for shock pressure in order to have higher pressure in the front shock helped a lot on the trail, since it seems that with the stock settings the front shock compresses too easily, leaving the back shock to absorb a disproportionate amount of the hit. However this set-up doesn’t work as well in the powder, and I am too lazy to constantly swap shock pressure during the day.
If I had to pick a set-up for either very bumpy trail, or well groomed trail where the ski “washiness” is not as much of an issue, it would be the timbersled. When the trail is very hard packed or icy though, the timbersled ski feels downright sketchy, and I would choose the yeti for sure here.
Tree-riding:
This is the biggest part of snowbiking for me, and I generally try to maximize the time I can spend in the trees in fresh powder. This is the place where I could feel the weight difference of the yeti the most, and the tighter the trees, the more of a difference it made. In the trees where there is a lot of turning and I am holding 2nd and 3rd gear, the yeti floated better, turned better, got stuck less, and was much easier to get unstuck when I did. I also noticed that the yeti seemed to get the power to the track a lot better in 2nd and 3rd gear, making it feel like the bike had more power. There are quite a few situations in tighter trees with lots of powder where the timbersled could not even follow the yeti leading to having to turn back.
In more open trees where I am sitting in 4th or 5th gear, I started to notice less difference between the tracks. In some of my double-blind tests I actually sometimes had a hard time figuring out which kit I was riding in the open trees, even after I had started to know both kits pretty well. There was more than one time where I was wrong on what bike I was riding when I looked back at this skid. I would still choose the yeti in the more open, faster trees but by a smaller margin. I think the yeti track is able to hold 4th gear in deep powder easier than the timbersled, but the power difference isn’t as noticeable as in the tighter stuff where you are constantly on and off the throttle.
Jumping:
I am not a huge jumper, but I have done my fair share of drops and jumps with both kits. While dropping off stuff in powder, I did not notice much difference between the skids at all, but found the yeti ski liked to pop out faster. When there was less snow, I found the landing of the timbersled felt a bit better, I think partly because it acted more like a dirtbike and was a bit more familiar to me.
I did notice more of a difference on the actual jumps vs the drops between the kits. I had a lot more trouble on the yeti keeping my weight shifted towards the back for a confident landing, which the timbersled felt a little bit more controllable (I think the drive chain and heavier track allowed for more stability here). With no front tire for gyro and such a light backend, I never got the confidence up to try some of the jumps on the yeti as I was doing on the timbersled, but this could be a matter of getting more saddle time on the yeti for me.
One thing I did notice that on jumps that actually ramp up and launch off, the timbersled seemed to absorb a lot of the centripetal acceleration by compressing the TSS before the launch. This meant that at the same approach speed, the yeti would get a lot more air since it wasn’t damped by the third shock. I found this a bit frustrating, but I think if I put more air in the TSS this would go away.
Playing:
I find that I enjoy playing around a lot more on the snowbikes compared to sledding since it uses so much less energy, and here is where the timbersled excelled the most. The riding that I am referring to here is in areas that I am not trying to get somewhere steep or challenge myself in the trees, it is just playing around in a field of powder having some fun. Some of the best feelings I have had on a snow bike are doing things like leaning back and catwalking as far as you can or going into a sharp powder turn and giving it enough gas to trench a bit so you can lean it way over and drag the handlebars in the snow.
In these sorts of situations, I found the yeti always wanted to grab traction and go while the timbersled seemed a bit more cooperative. Shifting weight forward and back on the yeti didn’t make a huge difference in how it rode, while the timbersled was a bit more dynamic. These are the same characteristics that make the yeti better in many other ways, but sometimes when I am having fun I want to be able to do things like force the bike to trench for a bit and then shift my weight and launch in a different direction, and I was not able to do this as much on the yeti. Part of this may be the slightly shorter track, but I believe it is also the TSS giving it the dirtbike feel.
Summary:
So which one is better? I don’t think that there is a clear answer to that because it depends on so many things like riding style, weight, bike, and snow conditions. The yeti kit has had a huge amount of thought and attention to deal that indicates a passion for the sport rather than a business, and that becomes clear as soon as you get it out of the box. I have dealt with customer service at both companies, and I have been very impressed with yeti in that area as well.
The yeti was my kit of choice in the majority of situations, but that doesn’t mean the timbersled doesn’t have a place to excel, especially considering the price difference. If I had a bunch of friends riding around on yetis, I don’t think I would consider a timbersled since I think there is a lot of places where the yetis could go and the timbersled couldn’t follow and I wouldn’t want to be “that guy” who holds up the group. But for simply riding around having fun, the timbersled is an amazing kit. Having access to both bikes, I think of the timbersled of more of a “toy” while the yeti is more of a “machine”. I enjoy each one in different circumstances, and would honestly have a hard time letting go of either.
My girlfriend seems to like the yeti better for almost everything, but she also doesn’t like playing around as much as I do (she usually just parks and watches me when I stop to play in a field of powder). Lately, it has been harder and harder to wrench the yeti out of her hands.
One thing to consider is almost every area where I liked the timbersled better I believe can be attributed directly to the TSS. My experience on the 2015 timbersled kit has not been nearly as good as the new one with the TSS, and I personally would not recommend buying a timbersled without one. However, if the new YSS shock being released in the next couple weeks makes as much of an impact on my riding as the TSS did, the yeti will be better in every area except price. I personally do not think the yeti has as much to improve on as the timbersled did by adding a third shock, so I think the yeti will see less gains compared the timbersled. This is just conjecture on my part though, so I will stop the YSS discussion here to stay away from this becoming the type of review based on incomplete information or association bias that caused me to write this review in the first place.
I find that weight makes a bigger difference in snowbiking than it ever did sledding or dirtbiking, which is what I think gives the yeti the edge in so many situations. I find that my girlfriend, who is about 20 kg lighter than me, can outclimb me pretty consistently on the same kit and has an easier time of some things even though I am the better rider. This means that a 120 kg rider will never go the same places as a 70 kg rider, other than with more track length and power. Based on my experience riding the 137” timbersled and how much I hated it, (I almost liked sledding more *gasp* than riding that thing), I think it is very important to match the rider to the bike and the track more than any other sport.
If I had to buy another kit, or have only one, it would be a yeti but that is because it matches the type of riding I am doing the best. I also have a lot of confidence in yeti to continually develop their kit and push the envleope instead of just treating it as a profit center.
Both of these kits have made an amazing contribution to the sport, and I think people will start gravitating to the kit that suits their style, so hopefully this review gives people a bit more information to help them with their decision.
Background information:
- 75 kg rider
- Changed from sledding to snowbiking in 2015
- Around 20 hours saddle time on each kit. Probably closer to 30 on the timbersled.
- Both kits are on a YZ450FX.
- My girlfriend rides one of the bikes, so I am able to switch fairly freely between the kits on the same conditions, and usually swap 4 -5 times per ride.
- I have gotten to experience pretty much all conditions in the last month, but primarily tree-riding in powder
- No association with either brand
- The Yeti is the 129” track. The timbersled is the 120” track with TSS. Despite the difference between the track lengths, this is the “all-around, do anything” kit from each company so I think is the best comparison. Having ridden a 137” timbersled, I think that the timbersled has to be a bit shorter to compare properly to the yeti due to different weights and construction. (Side-note on the 137” timbersled, I HATED it. Felt like I had a brick tied to my *** compared to the 120” and was not fun at all. May be better for heavier riders, but had way too much junk in the trunk for me)
A note on testing bias:
In any testing environment, people will have a tendency to look for and find what they are expecting to find due to either preconceived notions or outside influence. I am not immune to this. An example would be my second ride out on the yeti, and first time hitting good powder on the yeti, I was amazed how much I was floatation I had and how much track speed I could get compared to the timbersled. After riding around having a blast on the new kit for a while, I looked over and noticed…. the girlfriend was riding the yeti and I was actually still on the timbersled.
After this, I did as much testing as I could “double-blind”, so I did not know what kit I was riding and had to figure it out for myself based on the performance. This was virtually impossible to do on packed/groomed trail since the kits have a different sound on the trail and the ski is visible, but for most of the other riding I was able do a large amount of double blind testing since the bikes are identical other than the kits.
Climbing:
I am going to start by comparing the climbing capability, even though it is not very high on the priority list for me, but it is the least subjective and also seems to have exaggerated importance for many people (probably due to carryover of the “highmarking” mentality from sledding, which to me doesn’t matter much when snowbiking). I have tried a lot of testing on the exact same hills with both of the kits, and in most cases the yeti had a significant advantage over the timbersled, both when bombing straight up the hill and when sidehilling to get to the top. In the harder snow or snow that has a base, there is usually only a difference of a couple bike lengths, but in light, bottomless powder the yeti absolutely dominates, sometimes climbing nearly double the distance up the same hill.
The timbersled does have a couple advantages though. First, on hills that have a lot of bumps, or where the snow is not as soft, the timbersled seems to glide over the obstacle better, while the yeti seems to launch off a bit and then dig in a bit on landing. There is a pipeline hill on one of my rides that is often quite windblown and has a bunch of cross-ditching, and the timbersled comes over the top faster than the yeti since it seems to handle the ditches better without losing speed. For the riding I do though, this is an exception, and once I get back to the better snow where things start to matter the yeti is much better. The second thing I find with the timbersled is that it is easier to bail out of a hill when you know you aren’t going to make it without getting stuck. The timbersled seems a bit more willing to compress in the right spots allowing you to lift the ski out of the snow and flick it in a direction where you want, while the yeti has to bail out a bit more gradually since the ski sometimes doesn’t lose tractability when you want it to. I believe both of these advantages are solely due to the TSS shock, since the 2015 ST120 kit I have with the fixed strut does not do either of these things nearly as well.
The ski:
This category is extra important since the ski is low enough cost that many people are willing to run the best ski even if they are running a different kit. The yeti ski has a bigger surface area which allows it to float noticeably better, and even more importantly, pop out of the snow after a hard landing. The yeti ski also has a skag configuration that allows for a lot more bite when turning, while the timbersled doesn’t bite nearly as much and can feel a bit washy. I would actually say that the yeti ski could be dialed back a bit in terms of how much it bites. In car terms I would say that the timbersled ski understeers a lot, while the yeti ski oversteers a small amount. Here is a breakdown based on condition:
Trail: Here is where the yeti ski excels, and allows cornering to be much more confident and less jittery. I also feel more comfortable on the yeti ski at high speeds, even on straight stretches.
Powder: Yeti ski is preferred, but I only notice it much at slower speeds (second gear) or when jumping. In third gear and above, I notice very little difference between the skis in powder.
Crusty/Windblown: I actually prefer the timbersled ski here since the yeti ski bites too much, and if the top layer is hard and all three skags are in the snow, it can be very hard to turn properly.
Wet/heavy: Skis are roughly equal here, but I found myself having to get used to the yeti ski while travelling at high speeds through heavy snow since sometimes it would turn more than I expected it to, and I had to be leaned over a bit more than on the timbersled to compensate.
If I had to design my own ski, it would be the same floatation as the yeti, with a bite somewhere in between the skis (but leaning towards the yeti ski).
One other thing I noticed is the timbersled ski has a center skag that juts down fairly abruptly and is prone to grabbing on logs. I think this could be easily solved without reducing performance, and I think this would reduce injuries and/or bike damage.
Trail riding:
While it is not the fun part of most rides, and I generally try to plan around minimizing the amount of time I am on the trail, making the ride to the powder as comfortable as possible is important to me. As mentioned above, the yeti ski is a fairly substantial improvement on the trail. However, I found the timbersled skid to be preferred on the trail, especially for rough trail. The dirtbike pivot of the timbersled makes a huge difference here, and I found the yeti skid would often bounce when I didn’t want it to, leading to an out of control feeling at higher speeds. I believe the better feeling of the timbersled kit is primarily due to the TSS. My 2015 timbersled with the fixed strut was very bouncy in the back end.
I found that modifying the yeti recommendation for shock pressure in order to have higher pressure in the front shock helped a lot on the trail, since it seems that with the stock settings the front shock compresses too easily, leaving the back shock to absorb a disproportionate amount of the hit. However this set-up doesn’t work as well in the powder, and I am too lazy to constantly swap shock pressure during the day.
If I had to pick a set-up for either very bumpy trail, or well groomed trail where the ski “washiness” is not as much of an issue, it would be the timbersled. When the trail is very hard packed or icy though, the timbersled ski feels downright sketchy, and I would choose the yeti for sure here.
Tree-riding:
This is the biggest part of snowbiking for me, and I generally try to maximize the time I can spend in the trees in fresh powder. This is the place where I could feel the weight difference of the yeti the most, and the tighter the trees, the more of a difference it made. In the trees where there is a lot of turning and I am holding 2nd and 3rd gear, the yeti floated better, turned better, got stuck less, and was much easier to get unstuck when I did. I also noticed that the yeti seemed to get the power to the track a lot better in 2nd and 3rd gear, making it feel like the bike had more power. There are quite a few situations in tighter trees with lots of powder where the timbersled could not even follow the yeti leading to having to turn back.
In more open trees where I am sitting in 4th or 5th gear, I started to notice less difference between the tracks. In some of my double-blind tests I actually sometimes had a hard time figuring out which kit I was riding in the open trees, even after I had started to know both kits pretty well. There was more than one time where I was wrong on what bike I was riding when I looked back at this skid. I would still choose the yeti in the more open, faster trees but by a smaller margin. I think the yeti track is able to hold 4th gear in deep powder easier than the timbersled, but the power difference isn’t as noticeable as in the tighter stuff where you are constantly on and off the throttle.
Jumping:
I am not a huge jumper, but I have done my fair share of drops and jumps with both kits. While dropping off stuff in powder, I did not notice much difference between the skids at all, but found the yeti ski liked to pop out faster. When there was less snow, I found the landing of the timbersled felt a bit better, I think partly because it acted more like a dirtbike and was a bit more familiar to me.
I did notice more of a difference on the actual jumps vs the drops between the kits. I had a lot more trouble on the yeti keeping my weight shifted towards the back for a confident landing, which the timbersled felt a little bit more controllable (I think the drive chain and heavier track allowed for more stability here). With no front tire for gyro and such a light backend, I never got the confidence up to try some of the jumps on the yeti as I was doing on the timbersled, but this could be a matter of getting more saddle time on the yeti for me.
One thing I did notice that on jumps that actually ramp up and launch off, the timbersled seemed to absorb a lot of the centripetal acceleration by compressing the TSS before the launch. This meant that at the same approach speed, the yeti would get a lot more air since it wasn’t damped by the third shock. I found this a bit frustrating, but I think if I put more air in the TSS this would go away.
Playing:
I find that I enjoy playing around a lot more on the snowbikes compared to sledding since it uses so much less energy, and here is where the timbersled excelled the most. The riding that I am referring to here is in areas that I am not trying to get somewhere steep or challenge myself in the trees, it is just playing around in a field of powder having some fun. Some of the best feelings I have had on a snow bike are doing things like leaning back and catwalking as far as you can or going into a sharp powder turn and giving it enough gas to trench a bit so you can lean it way over and drag the handlebars in the snow.
In these sorts of situations, I found the yeti always wanted to grab traction and go while the timbersled seemed a bit more cooperative. Shifting weight forward and back on the yeti didn’t make a huge difference in how it rode, while the timbersled was a bit more dynamic. These are the same characteristics that make the yeti better in many other ways, but sometimes when I am having fun I want to be able to do things like force the bike to trench for a bit and then shift my weight and launch in a different direction, and I was not able to do this as much on the yeti. Part of this may be the slightly shorter track, but I believe it is also the TSS giving it the dirtbike feel.
Summary:
So which one is better? I don’t think that there is a clear answer to that because it depends on so many things like riding style, weight, bike, and snow conditions. The yeti kit has had a huge amount of thought and attention to deal that indicates a passion for the sport rather than a business, and that becomes clear as soon as you get it out of the box. I have dealt with customer service at both companies, and I have been very impressed with yeti in that area as well.
The yeti was my kit of choice in the majority of situations, but that doesn’t mean the timbersled doesn’t have a place to excel, especially considering the price difference. If I had a bunch of friends riding around on yetis, I don’t think I would consider a timbersled since I think there is a lot of places where the yetis could go and the timbersled couldn’t follow and I wouldn’t want to be “that guy” who holds up the group. But for simply riding around having fun, the timbersled is an amazing kit. Having access to both bikes, I think of the timbersled of more of a “toy” while the yeti is more of a “machine”. I enjoy each one in different circumstances, and would honestly have a hard time letting go of either.
My girlfriend seems to like the yeti better for almost everything, but she also doesn’t like playing around as much as I do (she usually just parks and watches me when I stop to play in a field of powder). Lately, it has been harder and harder to wrench the yeti out of her hands.
One thing to consider is almost every area where I liked the timbersled better I believe can be attributed directly to the TSS. My experience on the 2015 timbersled kit has not been nearly as good as the new one with the TSS, and I personally would not recommend buying a timbersled without one. However, if the new YSS shock being released in the next couple weeks makes as much of an impact on my riding as the TSS did, the yeti will be better in every area except price. I personally do not think the yeti has as much to improve on as the timbersled did by adding a third shock, so I think the yeti will see less gains compared the timbersled. This is just conjecture on my part though, so I will stop the YSS discussion here to stay away from this becoming the type of review based on incomplete information or association bias that caused me to write this review in the first place.
I find that weight makes a bigger difference in snowbiking than it ever did sledding or dirtbiking, which is what I think gives the yeti the edge in so many situations. I find that my girlfriend, who is about 20 kg lighter than me, can outclimb me pretty consistently on the same kit and has an easier time of some things even though I am the better rider. This means that a 120 kg rider will never go the same places as a 70 kg rider, other than with more track length and power. Based on my experience riding the 137” timbersled and how much I hated it, (I almost liked sledding more *gasp* than riding that thing), I think it is very important to match the rider to the bike and the track more than any other sport.
If I had to buy another kit, or have only one, it would be a yeti but that is because it matches the type of riding I am doing the best. I also have a lot of confidence in yeti to continually develop their kit and push the envleope instead of just treating it as a profit center.
Both of these kits have made an amazing contribution to the sport, and I think people will start gravitating to the kit that suits their style, so hopefully this review gives people a bit more information to help them with their decision.
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