Last Saturday, I went to a brand new obstacle course event called the Iron Quad Challenge (www.ironquadchallenge.com). It was held at River Run ATV park in Jacksonville, TX. The course was designed for 4x4 utility quads and RUVs, and it was a lot of fun! The thing that makes this event different is it is set up to run 2 quads at the same time in head-to-head competition!!

There were about a dozen or so racers who showed up to race on Saturday in the various classes. Because of the low turn-out, the organizers let everyone choose to do a double elimination for all classes, so everyone was guaranteed at least 2 runs.

The obstacle course was spread out over something like 1/4 mile or more, and it had a little bit of everything...deep sand, 2 sets of truck tires to drove over, a mud bog (altho this was more like a water hole with a hard bottom), a small section of big bolders, some serious whoops with logs in them that were very tricky, lots of log obstacles go over and a few log bridges to cross and at the end of the course was a 4 foot tall teter totter called the widow maker! This was as much fun to watch as it was to compete in! A few brave soles didn't bother to wait for the teter totter to come down before driving down it...instead they used it as a RAMP and jumped off of it!

They had 3 separate classes for different size quads for the Men and another class for Women plus another class for RUVs. By far, the best race of the day was the RUV races! There were 2 Rhinos that went head to head twice (double elimination) and both races were very close and very exciting. I couldn't belive my eyes when those 2 rhinos hit every jump like they were on dirt bikes! On the 2nd race, one of the rhinos apparently broke a rear cv axle near the middle of the course and he later got hung up on the 2nd tire obstacle and had to pull out of the race. Those guys drove like maniacs, but they were as fast or faster than the quads!

As for me, I lined up against a Grizzly 700 and lost. 2nd time I lined up with the same quad, but in the other lane. I was neck and neck with him until he flipped his quad coming down off a short hill...luckily for him, he landed on a bunch of truck tires and so that cushioned the blow when his quad landed on top of him! I stopped and flipped his quad off of him...luckily he was unhurt. I later completed the course and won that round only to lose the next round to a Griz 660 and finish the day in 2nd place in my class. I went on to compete in a bonus round for a $200 cash prize...but I lost again to the same guy on the Griz 660. It was a fun event tho, but almost everyone with quads had larger mud tires and I think that was a better set-up than my 25" bighorns...I had lousy traction in the soft sand and my smaller tire size was not the best for the large rocks and logs that we had to climb over.

I look forward to the next event to be held in the spring, and I highly recommend that everyone near the Texas area to come out and give this event a try! Its a lot of fun to compete in and just as much fun to watch!

PS - One guy entered 2 classes (M1 and M2) with 2 different Honda quads...he was super fast and won both classes...his prizes totalled approx. $450 in cash plus $200 in gift certificates!!! You can make some serious dough at this event if you are pretty good! I only took home $12 for my 2nd place finish in the M3 class, but it would have been more had there been more people people entered in my class.

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