Twenty-two
on March 22.

One run that meant more

I have made thousands of runs on a snowmobile. This is the one I will never forget.

In 2014, I had the chance to take my dad David’s old No. 22 mod sled back to the Jackson Hole World Championship Hill Climb. It was not a replica or a modern sled carrying an old number. It was his machine—the tube-chassis mod he built and raced.

My dad was a racer, builder and innovator. He won four King of Kings titles at Jackson and built machines years ahead of their time. Shortly before he died in an avalanche in 2001, he sold the sled. The gentleman who bought it later gave it back to me, returning one of the most important pieces of my dad's racing life to our family.

On March 22, I was 22 years old and wearing the same No. 22. I lined up on the same mountain with the same sled. When the run was over, the time matched the one my dad had recorded there 14 years earlier.

“A moment I will never forget, in memory of #22.”

— Toby Shepherd

The numbers made the day almost impossible to script. But the meaning was not in a coincidence. It was in getting to feel that machine work beneath me, point it up the same hill and experience a small part of what my dad had built for himself.

I race No. 22 because it came before me. That day at Jackson, I did more than carry the number. For one run, I followed the exact line it came from.