Grizzly 700 meets 700 foot sand mountain.

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teejay
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Grizzly 700 meets 700 foot sand mountain.

Postby teejay » Mon Apr 14, 2008 8:35 am

So this weekend my friends and I took a little camping trip to the Little Sahara Recreation Area about 3 hours south west from Salt Lake City, out in the middle of nowhere.
http://www.utah.com/playgrounds/little_sahara.htm

This BLM recreation area is filled with all sorts of trails, plus thousands of acres of sand dunes to play on.

This is a picture of sand mountain from the base, it is not mine, and I'll get into why in a minute.

http://rides.webshots.com/photo/2873624 ... 5012yWNHPh

Now, there are two sides people go up, the left side is pretty much where sand rails go up. The right part of the mountain is where dirt bikes with paddles go up, and sport quads pretty much take any part of it.

I on my grizzly with stock rims and tires, did the right side in 4 high going about 25 - 30 all the way up. It is a crazy mountain to climb and saturday there was just a constant stream of people climing this thing. when you approach the base camp to this place all you see is this mountain with little dots going up and down to this thing. Once you get to the top of the mountain, you turn around and head right down. Most people really have to take it easy going down. They have paddles and are light enough that they don't really dig down into the sand enough to slow their decent, so they start off going slow. With the grizzly and the engine breaking I was going down way to slow and ended up giving it a little bit of gas to get down the mountain. Keep in mind while you're going down, hundreds of other motorcycles, and sport quads are coming up, and all of them have paddles and are throwing sand everywhere. I can say that now I've climbed it, and will probably never climb it again. It was rather fun to watch people climb it. There were a ton of sand crawlers, sand rails, jeeps, suzuki sidekicks all tricked out trying to climb this mountain as well. Most normal vehicles that tried it would go up the left side but would end up having to arc back down about half way up. There was one guy with a late 70's chevy blazer with a lift kit and really agressive tires that managed to drive up the left side, the right side, and all over the mountain like it was nothing. It would seriously take him less than 20 seconds to accend the mountain. There were not any rollovers on Sand Mountain at all which was a good thing. My experience which I describe below meant that I really had to do an all or nothing thing here.

As to why I don't have my own pic's of the bottom and the top of the mountain, and time for the bad part of the story.

Now this was my first time doing any dune riding, and so one of my friends and I went out saturday morning before we hit sand mountain, in order to get some experience with the dunes. After an hour I was doing great, I could handle going up steep dunes, and with the power of the grizzly I could do most of the dunes without going into 4wd. One of the dune's I took, however wasn't so kind to either me or my grizzly. The ridge of the dune isn't very wide, it was wide enough to stay level so I figured I'd go up it. Now I wasn't riding strait up the dune as it was about a 70 degree slope. I instead took to the ridge like people do, and I got up to the top, the downhill side of the dune decided to play a prank on me and gave way. Needless to say, my grizzly sank in, and threw me down the dune, then decided to roll down as well. The quad did two rolls, then another 90 degree roll and land on it's side down at the bottom. Now when it sank, it pretty much threw me off, so I didn't roll with it. I remember it giving way and I said "Oh shit" and I flew off. Once I hit the ground the only instinct I had was to keep rolling to get the hell out of the way should the quad follow me down. Thankfully I still had somewhat of a forward direction while my quad did not. This dune was just way too soft. My friends little 350 took it no problem, so once he saw that I didn't make it, he turned around and came down the ridge line instead of the face of the dune that i rolled. The dune pretty much showed no tracks whatsoever. There were no indentations of where my machine rolled, no tire tracks, nothing. It's like it never happened. Now because the dune was so soft, it was really like rolling in water, so there was no damage to myself or the bike. The only thing that did get damaged was my ram gps mount, which when I replace i'll mount it lower on my handle bars. All in all it was a great time, and I'm glad I popped my rolling cherry on a dune instead of a rocky trail. I wanted to take pictures of this, but it just so happened that my camera was in my cargo bag that was on it's side and under sand. Once I rolled it over, it just looked like a quad at the base of a dune.

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GrizzlyGuy
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Postby GrizzlyGuy » Mon Apr 14, 2008 9:10 am

WoW! What a great story! :shock:
teejay wrote: Needless to say, my grizzly sank in, and threw me down the dune, then decided to roll down as well. The quad did two rolls, then another 90 degree roll and land on it's side down at the bottom.
Zowie! I'm glad you got a roll for creds, but 2? You must be an over-achiever... :P
teejay wrote: Now when it sank, it pretty much threw me off, so I didn't roll with it. I remember it giving way and I said "Oh shit" and I flew off.
Probably a real good thing (being thrown off). 8)
teejay wrote: I'm glad I popped my rolling cherry on a dune instead of a rocky trail.
Me too, else you might be dead and we'd never have heard this great story! :cry:
teejay wrote: I can say that now I've climbed it, and will probably never climb it again.

Famous last words. I'll give you a month. :lol:
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BruteForce
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Postby BruteForce » Mon Apr 14, 2008 8:14 pm

I'm glad you came out of it unscathed and possibly wiser.

I was out with the ~26 ATV convoy from 5Mile Pass to Eureka.

I haven't had interest in Little Sahara (yet), and am still having fun exploring the west desert in sun or snow.

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Postby Ken » Mon Apr 14, 2008 8:42 pm

Great story...glad you're ok.
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teejay
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Postby teejay » Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:30 am

BruteForce wrote:I'm glad you came out of it unscathed and possibly wiser.

I was out with the ~26 ATV convoy from 5Mile Pass to Eureka.

I haven't had interest in Little Sahara (yet), and am still having fun exploring the west desert in sun or snow.
Yeah I was planning on doing the little moab changed to five mile ride earlier in the week and I let my friends twist my arm a little too much. The dune riding just isn't my thing. It is full of drunk rednecks going as fast as possible on the sport quads to see how much air they can get to impress their girlfriends. Add in the hundreds of scout troops walking across the dunes, and it is just a bad combination. There is a counter entering the park that says how many days since the last serious injury took place. Hurting myself or my quad is something I can live with, but seriously injuring someone else or a group of kids out there walking around is not something I want to do.

Watching these folks at the base of sand mountain made me realize the mountains are where it is at. I dropped my moab and paiute guides off at my friends house last night and before I got home he called and wants to do a trip to Moab next month.

This is where I sort of can't comprehend the logic of people who think OHV's need to be restricted to small areas. I mean, you're taking something that has the ability to seriously injure or in some cases kill someone, and instead of spreading them out over hundreds of thousands of acres in a national forrest, you want to confine them to a small area that is devoid of any sort of "pretty trees and plants that need to be saved" thus increasing the impact and chance of serious injury.

I'll stick to the rocks and the trails in the mountains. Much more scenic, and you're not picking sand out of your ass, nose and ears four days and six showers later.

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KaTz
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Postby KaTz » Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:44 pm

teejay im glad nothing serious happened to you & your grizz....

from one who does both the Dune and the Mountain thing also

im here to tell you that there is so much more than what you rode

& saw you were at Sand Mountain , that is the place where the

testosterone kicks in seeing who can make it to the top the fastest

is what it's all about it's fun to watch yet you do see many

really great quads and rails there

there are many other places to ride that fit the 4X4's

the oasias campground , and white sands area away from the

Crazy Sand Mountain .... before you turn to head into the pay station

if you had gone straight you would have headed to more of a

mountain area (which is free to ride ) yet you still get the sand

and away from the crowd ...

you also have a choice of many fun areas away from people

all over the place after you have paid one being white sands just

off to the right ,, the other areas are off the the left just past the

pay station , so dont think of the dunes as just for Rednecks &

drunks & sport quads , the same thing can be said for the 4X4

idiots also in the Mountains they are no different ..

like anyplace one choses to ride their are good and bad areas , places

where it's crowded and places that are hidden gems you must find

them ,,
now the only reason you were picking out sand out of your ass , nose
ears was for the simple fact that you biffed it !!!!! plain & simple

sorry to say but when riding the Mountains we get way dirtier than
the sand their both fun

next time explore more out side other than Sand Mountain
you'll be pleasantly surprised ,,,,

teejay
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Postby teejay » Wed Apr 16, 2008 12:46 pm

We camped at white sands, and the dunes there is where I biffed it, but it was pretty windy the first night. I got pretty dirty from getting roostered by all the dirt bikers with paddles on their wheels. There was a group staying in white sands that was having fun throwing sand at everyone.

I did ride on the hills between the white sands camp and the visitor center, and had some fun, and if I go down there again, I'll be riding in the mountains to the south of the visitor center next time.

One of the BLM guys there said that the dunes that are east of sand mouontain are a lot easier for new folks to ride than the ones outside of white sands, so I'd probably give that a shot too.

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KaTz
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Postby KaTz » Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:08 pm

well teejay im glad to hear that you will go back :D
there are so many places that are away from others to enjoy

we also dont like the barrage of people yet when you cant get to the
mountains the sand box calls

with the amount of snowfall we seem to keep having it's gonna be a
while before any riding will happen in the mountains unless you
down south ..

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GrizzlyGuy
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Postby GrizzlyGuy » Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:11 pm

Sand in your arse or not, you did good Teejay. I didn't realize that a heavy 4x4 quad with no sand tires was even capable of climbing monsters like that. Now I know it can be done. :)

In case you need a new monster to conquer, there is another Sand Mountain along Hwy 50, maybe 20 minutes east of Fallon, NV. Flyin Boy and I stopped to gawk and take some pictures on our way to Utah in 2005. Crappy pictures, but the little speck you see on the side of the sand is a sports quad headed up:

Image

When we saw one flip as he approached the near-vertical part near the top, we shook our heads, decided that was way too dangerous, would be way safer to just soar that monster in a hang glider, so we continued on to Utah with the Grizzlies never leaving the trailer. :shock: :-k [-(
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My quad: Grizzly 700, 25" Bighorns, Bash Plates,
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teejay
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Postby teejay » Wed Apr 16, 2008 3:48 pm

Yes, people were very suprised I made it up on a utility quad. Even more so with stock tires on it. I'd be interested in seeing if another 150 pounds of the polaris could do it...


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