Steve Ferguson just keeps sending them in, so we just keep posting ‘em! Rare photos from back. Enjoy.

I think Valdi Stefanson and I were in the minority watching this film in Minneapolis the night of it’s premiere. I believe we were the only vintage sled enthusiasts in there.

The theatre was full, but most attendees had something to do with the film, or the families of those in the film. Or they were film buffs, or just fans of Minnesota history. The audience also contained the film maker and several people from the film. The movie is a documentary. The movie is pure folk lore. Minnesota folk lore. It’s a lot of fun. I found myself laughing or smiling all the way through it.

“Wild Bill Cooper” was, by all accounts, was an adventurous man from Willow River Minnesota. Back in the 1970′s, he looked at the trip Ralph Plaisted took to the North Pole on sleds some years earlier. For that trip, the sleds were loaded on planes and brought to within 300 miles of the pole and the rest of the trip was done from there.

Wild Bill thought that only driving the sleds 600 miles was a very sissy thing to do, and he planned on making fun of Plaisted by traveling all the way from Willow River Minnesota to Moscow Russia.

They didn’t get there the first year. So they left the sleds and came back a year later to try and keep going. They never did make it. But those who were on either the first or second trip are interviewed throughout the movie. They all have that thick northern Minnesota accent (which I love) and they were hysterically funny recounting what a grueling, difficult trip this was, and all the adventures they had on the trip. Clearly it was the memory of a life time.

Now you’ve probably never heard of Wild Bill. He doesn’t have a web page, isn’t on facebook and doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. But he was clearly a larger than life character that many people in the Willow River area remember with affection. But Bill’s life after the trip didn’t go so smooth. There were allegations of drug running and bank robberies that put him smack on the top of the FBI’s most wanted list.

Bill got in his airplane one day and was never heard from again. To this day, no one has any clue where he is – or even if he’s alive.

The movie is very worth seeing if your a vintage sleds fan. There’s not a ton of stuff about the sleds in the movie (one of the sleds used on the trip still exists) but the picture you get of what sledding was like back then in harsh conditions is wonderful

The film will make the rounds on some other film fairs for about the next year, then the film maker plans to put it on DVD and make it available from the films website: http://www.wildbillsrun.com/

When it’s available… we will let you know. You will want to see it.

Valdi Stefanson alerted us to this this morning… a NEW filem from 1972 about a man trying to make it from Minnesota to Moscow on Moto-ski’s! Perhaps we need to all get together for a screening?

Website for the film: http://www.wildbillsrun.com/

Here’s the official press release:

Arctic Crime Caper Premieres at Minnesota Film Festival

The Minnesota-made documentary “Wild Bill’s Run” has been selected to show at the 2012 Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival

Minneapolis, MN – “Wild Bill’s Run,” a feature-length documentary directed by Minnesota filmmaker Mike Scholtz will have its world premiere at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) on April 19 at 7pm.

The film tells the story of Willow River, Minnesota native Bill Cooper. During the winters of 1972 and 1973, Cooper led a crew of adventurers on a grueling expedition across the Arctic ice. During some of the darkest days of the Cold War, their goal was to snowmobile from Minnesota to Moscow and around the world. But they didn’t quite make it.

After the failed expedition returned home, Cooper allegedly turned to a life of crime. Accused of drug smuggling and bank robbery, Cooper was named one of America’s Ten Most Wanted by the U.S. Marshals Service. But he was never caught, disappearing under mysterious circumstances.

“Bill Cooper was the sort of larger-than-life character you can’t help but admire,” says director Mike Scholtz. “I think this story pretty definitively proves that truth is stranger than fiction. That’s why I love rediscovering little-known Minnesota stories and sharing them with an audience. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Scholtz is a filmmaker from Wrenshall, Minnesota. “Wild Bill’s Run” is his first feature-length film. He also helps program the Free Range Film Festival, which takes place annually during the last weekend of July in a barn south of Wrenshall.

MSPIFF runs April 12 – May 3 at the St. Anthony Main Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Over three weeks, the Festival will present some 300 narrative, documentary, and short films to an expected audience of more than 45,000. After three decades, MSPIFF is the largest, most anticipated film event in the Upper Midwest.

For more information, please visit wildbillsrun.com or http://mspfilmfest.org/2012.

You know it and you love it… and if you don’t know it, you are in for one very long (FUN!) web surfing experience. Of course I am talking about David’s Vintage Snowmobile Page.

It’s hard to believe, but March 15th is David’s 10th anniversary of working on that website. Having done a great deal of it, I can fully appreciate the massive amount of hard work David has done so that all of us can enjoy it for free.

Surfing David’s site is sheer joy. Every link holds the possibility of another undiscovered nugget of vintage sled joy. Yeah, the site is hard to navigate, but I think that is part of it’s charm; it literally begs you to stay on there and just try a few more links… brochures, manuals, photos, videos… he’s got so many that it’s hard to comprehend.

Having dealt with David himself several times, I can tell you he’s a top-notch guy with nothing but a real passion and love for old sleds and the people who like them. He’s a valued treasure to the hobby that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. So on this, the occasion of David’s 10th year of entertaining us all, we say:

THANKS DAVID! KEEP ON ROCKIN’ THAT WEBSITE!