Well, I decided to give my '07 360 Prairie a full workout and find it's limits before I end up on our hunt camp trail which is absolutely a mess.
I learned a lesson here. I decided to go to a local ATV park with over 1,400 acres of pretty bad terrain. I couldn't get anyone out with me that day so I went it alone....not smart in hindsight.
After about an hour of safe running and a few winching episodes, I finally found one of the limits of the machine....the roll over high side. The trails were so heavily rutted that my skid plate which has hookup for the snowplow attachment kept catching on the high centre ground between the ruts. My rear differential would hang up but it would skid. The snowplow attachment points are like velco hooks into the turf and really cause drag. Soooo to make a long story short I started riding off centre on the ruts and staying high. Worked great for a while until I entered a sharp drop with a turn at the bottom. I made it to the bottom alright but fell into the ruts right at the turn part. I was not going fast. I was opposite to the way you so often see things happen in slow motion. I can't really tell what happened by memory because it was a flash and I was on the ground with my new machine belching smoke on it's side. I flew about 5 feet but the way I hit the sharp end of the hill side was very dangerous. My left thigh was so sore ....you know that kind of hurt that is so bad you cannot believe that you might cry? Well no tears but after a few minutes I was up an going to get home. My thigh ( now two days later is purple black and blue) was so sore I could hardly swing over to staddle the machine. Well I'll head home with my tail between my legs. Not so fast buddy, 5 minutes later I was stuck in the first 10 feet of 200 feet of slime clay. I could only see the tops of my tires. I had to dig in 8 inches to find my winch. My leg was killing me. I pulled out the cable to the nearest reasonable tree....not long enough. No problem I'll just get my 30 foot of 3/8 " rope from my rack. No go...must have flown off the same time I did....unbelievable. I limped 15 minutes up trail, found my rope headed back. Finally winched my self forward. The mud was coming up the the headlights and was pushing like a big snow plow. The winch was straining and the mud was getting deeper. I had to winch off to the side but the mud bank was very high. I do it anyways. Winching front and sideways with the wheels spinning. Now I'm out finally. But I cannot unhook the winch b/c my cable was heavily overlapped because of the side pulling and now it was bunged up.
Anyways, I made it home alive. Lots of sweat and a good deal of pain. Bike seems fine after much high pressure spray but a really good lesson was learned. Never hit bad trails alone, I was stupid but I really didn't think much would happen to a chicken **** like me, but I was wrong.
Sorry for the long post.
DaveP

 

that sucks... i kno the pain... and riding is def not a smart thing alone