The wife saw an article on TV here in Australia about snow cats in Antartica and asked me about snow cats in Alaska.

When I lived in Barrow I don't remember seeing one, some people had Matraxx on their trucks, but beyond that I don't remember anything like a Hegland or Snowcat, or even the kind the ski lifts in Montana use being around.

Are they common in the rest of Alaska, are they reasonable to buy?

I can't seem to figure out what to call them, search engines are leaving me blank.

Thanks for your help.

Snow cats are somewhat popular in Alaska but not as much as snowmachines are.

Tuckers are the most popular still in use followed by Snow Tracs and then SUSV's also known as Hagglunds. After those three brand it falls to the various track vehicles still in use which are normally Nodwells or Thikols.

I believe there is a Chugach Powder guides use snow cats of one form or another to get people into the back country.

A lot of the Tuckers are used to maintain snowmachine trails.

The rest of them get used to access remote property and to haul in supplies during the winter months when everything is frozen.

Thanks, we didn't have the volume of snow in Barrow nor the accumulation of ground snow that they do in Nome.

The eskimos that had a lot of money had a mattrax equipped suv or pickup to get between villages or fill the larder.

The biggest collection of such vehicles I've seen is in Deadhorse. There is a large fleet of Tucker Teras that are used for seismic work on the North Slope oil fields. Alyeska Pipeline company has a small fleet of them they use for acessing remote valves along the pipeline in the winter. I've never seen them for sale.

Snowmachines are far more popular due to a combination of their low cost, manuverability, ease to transport and high speed. Not to mention that getting a snowmachine stuck in overflow is an oh crap moment, but typically easy to deal with with a small collection of tools and some ingenuity. Getting a tucker or other tracked vehicle stuck in overflow would be a major recovery if not a write off of the vehicle.

A pard has several of them that he has acquired and is selling locally. They look like fun rigs.