Why ski when you can race Baja trucks in the snow instead?

Desert racing trucks tend to sit around the garage waiting for the first races of spring. Rally cars have a winter season, but to carve through the backwoods they tend toward smaller models. What if there was a form of motorsports that took Baja-type jumping and made it all-season? Leave it to Red Bull to find the answer.

Dubbed the Red Bull Frozen Rush 2014, the event held last month at the Sunday River Resort in Maine featured eight trophy trucks in head-to-head course racing, using studded tires for some — but not a lot — of grip. The starts were staggered so that one truck would of course be rolling between snow banks just as the competition was jumping them, the kind of showmanship NASCAR fantasizes about.

As the drivers show, it's an different challenge for them; while they're used to running through hours of dust in open-cab machines, the glare and cold along with a lack of grip make snow racing a unique beast. When a winter lasts as long as this one, someone's bound to find a way to make it fun.