Snowmobile tours: licence, minimum age, cost and safety

You drive, so most operators want a driving licence. A full car licence is the norm – Arctic Adventures in Iceland refuses a motorcycle licence on its own, Canadian Wilderness Adventures in Whistler wants it unrestricted, and in Yellowstone a learner's permit is not enough, because the park requires a valid licence by regulation. There are exceptions: Good Times Adventures in Breckenridge and Queenstown's heli-snowmobile operator ask only for proof of age, and in Iceland an extra guide can drive you if nobody in your party has a licence. Iceland's own licence class B covers snowmobiles.

The driving age is 16 at most American and Canadian operators, 15 at Breckenridge and Queenstown, 18 at Mountaineers of Iceland and 19 in Whistler. Passengers ride behind a parent from 5 (Tahoe, Colorado, Banff), 6 (Jackson Hole, Iceland) or 8 (Yellowstone). Weight is set per sled: two people and 450 lb on a double sled in Wyoming and at Tahoe, 400 lb in Colorado, about 230 kg on Langjökull; Arctic Adventures sets no limit but you must fit their largest overall. Pregnancy is excluded at Mountaineers, Canadian Wilderness and Good Times and discouraged almost everywhere else.

Snowmobiling is one of the dearer days on these grounds, and prices are often per sled, not per person – sharing one with a passenger halves the cost. On Langjökull a glacier hour costs ISK 33,500 per person on a shared sled or €190–295 on the booking platforms, the top price including a Golden Circle day from Reykjavík. Lake Tahoe charges $240–310 per machine for two hours, Breckenridge from $258 solo or $351 for two, Whistler CAD 279–899 plus a compulsory CAD 35 collision cover. A Jackson Hole day over Togwotee Pass is $425 for the driver and $300 for a passenger; the full day into Yellowstone $490–525 plus park fees, and non-US residents now pay an extra $100 park fee each. The top is Queenstown, where the helicopter to the plateau puts it at NZD 1,140. The table lists the cheapest bookable tour per ground.

Canada has the best data. From 2013 to 2019 an average of 73 people a year died in snowmobile accidents there, 89 % of them men. In collisions, ejections and rollovers, alcohol or drugs were involved in 55 % of the deaths, excessive speed in 48 % and riding in the evening or at night in 46 %; among single-sled accidents, drowning through ice accounted for 14 % and avalanches for 10% (Statistics Canada). Wisconsin tells the same story: about 14 deaths a year over ten years, alcohol the leading factor, a third of the 2025 deaths on frozen or open water (Wisconsin DNR). In the backcountry the avalanche is the other risk: snowmobilers and snowbikers accounted for five of the 22 avalanche deaths in the United States in the 2024/25 winter (CAIC).

Read those figures for what they are: private riders on their own machines, often at night, on lakes, after drinking. A guided tour removes most of that – daylight, groomed trails or glacier tracks checked by the guide, no alcohol, and in Yellowstone a legal speed limit of 35 mph. What remains is the sled itself: a machine of well over 200 kg that rolls on a side slope and throws you off in a sharp turn at speed. Stay in the guide's track and keep your distance.