A good friend from WV that I met 2 years ago at the TX GNCC race (Jack Ramsey) sent me a DVD of the 2005 GNCC season. I watched it last night and the end of the video shows various quads having great difficulty climbing a steep, muddy hill at the Ironman race (last race of 2005).

Like something out of hollywood, the video shows (from the top of the hill viewpoint) my buddy Jack climbing up the hill on his yellow P700. BTW, Jack is not the kind of guy to take the easier, but longer alternative route around the hill climb. He makes it up about 2/3rds the way with no problems when suddenly his quad launches off a very steep rock face, when his quad lands he let off the throttle completely so it would not roll over backwards on top of him...then he nails the gas and starts to climb the hill again slowly. You can see all 4 tires spinning like crazy (he had swamplite tires and they seemed to get good traction and cleaned themselves real good)...then suddenly his quad shifts over to the right (off camber) and he bails off the left side with the help of a spectator standing nearby. While Jack desperately clings to a tree root to keep himself from sliding down the hill with his quad, you can see his Prairie roll end-over-end about 3 times (looks like a rag doll being tossed around by a pitt bull) before it rolled slowly into a tree at the bottom of the hill (a spectator jumped out of the way at the last second to avoid getting hit).

I believe Jack told me this crash landing bent the frame, broke the steering stem, a few plastics and some other stuff. He ended up repairing it and selling it. Now he has a new Bomb 800 to race with for the 06 season. I'm just thankful that Jack had the brains to abandon ship at the right time and he did not get seriously injured in the process!

If anyone happens to have this DVD, be sure to check out that hill climb footage at the end of the video and you will see Jack's attempt on his P700. Very exciting stuff indeed.

Happy trails...[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]