BigAl
Expedition Leader
So I had an interesting challenge yesterday. A local fire company runs an ATV poker run 3 times a summer on private land. I did the poker run last year in a Yamaha Rhino. The whole time I was thinking, I'd love to do these trails in my jeep someday. Last week I contacted the fire hall and asked if I could enter a jeep. It took them a few days but they got back to me and said “Have Fun, make sure you sign the waiver”.
We signed in and hit the trails early. We got a great welcome from every ATV'r we met. Some expressed doubt that we would be able to complete the course. The route was mix of very muddy trails, long hill climbs and super tight tree routes. The trees were the most challenging. The course was laid out years ago before side by side ATVs got popular, so there very some very tight squeezes. Many times you had to plan your angle thru the trees to set yourself up for the next obstacle. We had to winch in 2 spots due to extremely deep mud. A growing group of ATVs started to wait for us at each mudhole b/c they knew that we could not/would not take the bypasses. We never left the trail or cut a tree. Our plan was to do the entire course . We were foiled ~2 miles from the finish by a section of trees that we just could not find a way thru. We did hit all the check points and except for the one bypass did the entire poker run. The organizers said that as far as they knew, we were the first vehicle to do the course. It was 26 miles total and took us ~7 hours. I only got this one pic b/c my spotter dropped his new Droid at the first mudhole, so it went into dry storage for the rest of the day. Any way if you every see a flyer for an ATV poker run, you might want to check it out.
edit: I talked the a few of the organizers and they wondered what kind of turnout they would get for a jeep/truck run. I told them if they advertised well, I would think they could get 50-60 vehicles.
We signed in and hit the trails early. We got a great welcome from every ATV'r we met. Some expressed doubt that we would be able to complete the course. The route was mix of very muddy trails, long hill climbs and super tight tree routes. The trees were the most challenging. The course was laid out years ago before side by side ATVs got popular, so there very some very tight squeezes. Many times you had to plan your angle thru the trees to set yourself up for the next obstacle. We had to winch in 2 spots due to extremely deep mud. A growing group of ATVs started to wait for us at each mudhole b/c they knew that we could not/would not take the bypasses. We never left the trail or cut a tree. Our plan was to do the entire course . We were foiled ~2 miles from the finish by a section of trees that we just could not find a way thru. We did hit all the check points and except for the one bypass did the entire poker run. The organizers said that as far as they knew, we were the first vehicle to do the course. It was 26 miles total and took us ~7 hours. I only got this one pic b/c my spotter dropped his new Droid at the first mudhole, so it went into dry storage for the rest of the day. Any way if you every see a flyer for an ATV poker run, you might want to check it out.
edit: I talked the a few of the organizers and they wondered what kind of turnout they would get for a jeep/truck run. I told them if they advertised well, I would think they could get 50-60 vehicles.
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