I advised some of you that I would report on my elk hunting trip to Colorado. I normally run under 1000 feet of elevation in Minnesota, and I didn't want to change my jets for one week in Colorado as I was happy with the way it was running at my normal elevation. We ended up camping and running at around 10,000 feet of elevation in southwest Colorado.

Rather than change jets, I put on a Diamond G snorkle and a K&N air filter, thinking that would lean out the mixture at elevation. It worked. The bike ran fine, actually idled OK, and power didn't seem like it fell off much at all. It was cold at night, so starting was a bit slow, but not really too bad, don't think the elevation was much of a factor as the thing is cold blooded anyway. Back at normal elevation I will go back to the stock snorkle and air filter, at least until I decide I need more power.

I ended up putting about 40 miles on the atv, even though parts of the area we hunted was closed to all vehicular travel. I could run on the roads and on some trails which saved me a lot of walking up hill in the mornings to start the hunt. Of course, I ended up walking 10-14 miles a day anyway. That was OK, because hunting hard allowed us to get 3 of 5 licenses filled. We got one bull and two cows, and I had a hand in both cows.

My new Bear Claws provided great traction on hard pack and rocks, no flats. I only ran into a little mud, but they did well there too. This was the first real running I did with the new tires, and I found out that they are probably out of balance a bit as I was getting a handlebar wobble on the gravel at about 32-35 miles an hour. I will have to take the fronts off and see if I can balance them before my Nebraska hunting trip next month. Other than that, I was pleased with them.

One side note, I built a hauler for the atv that fit into the receiver hitch so I wouldn't have to pull a trailer and worry about small tire flats or wheel bearings. The hauler worked great, at least on my F350, and garnered lots of looks from other hunters who were hauling their atvs in pickup beds or on trailers. It bounced a bit on the bumpy highways around Denver, but was overall very stable. Truck handled the weight well and mileage was good. I'm glad I built it.