Trip Reports |
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5-27-06 Trail Blazing with Mark 56 Miles |
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Jeff's step brother Mark came into town this weekend, and wanted to go riding with us. They still needed to load up his ATV and drive over to Jeff's house, so I rode alone for a while. I was heading into Indian Creek, and heard an ATV that sounded like Brent's. Sure enough, when I got to the Island, and looked below, there was Brent stuck in a real deep hole, the ATV was just about on its side. He looked up at me and waved me down, I could tell me was happy to see someone rode by. I made my way down to him to pull him out. He was stuck pretty good, with one side of the ATV submerged in the hole. He said he tried to straddle the two mud holes, but slid over and dumped down into one. He has big Mudzilla tires, and probably could have made it, if he had just hit the hole straight on and gunned it. Only the side of the tires was making good contact, so he didn't have the traction to get it out. | ||
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I
hooked my winch to him, and pulled him out fairly easy. The Venom 3500x
winch has definitely been worth every penny. Brent said he was on his way
home when he got stuck, so he headed out. Riding out the creek, trying to
wash himself and the ATV off some. I rode around the Island area some, killing time till Jeff and Mark were due back. I wasn't riding another 10 minutes, when I saw a couple real young kids out on a couple small sport quads. I was curious to where they were planning to ride, so I circled around to where they were. One of them was already stuck in a mucky spot, and they were trying to push it out. They asked for my help, and I was happy to lend a hand, or at least a winch. I just hooked up the cable and pulled them out in reverse, since they had a very small sport quad. I had perfect timing when leaving Indian Creek. As soon as I got to the end of Indian Creek road, Mark, Jeff, and drew were passing by on their way to Jeff's. I followed them down to Jeff's, where Mark unloaded his ATV. He had a pretty neat trailer, that tilted as he drove off of it, so you didn't need ramps or anything for it. First we rode up to Table Top, and the Hill Climb there. Mark took a quick look at it, and shot right up it with no trouble. From that, I figured he would be pretty fun to ride with, and he was. |
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Here is a video of Mark Climbing Table Top Hill. mark_climbing_table_top_hill.wmv |
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Jeff asked if I had seen the huge cliff line there at the Table Top strip mine, I had no idea what he was talking about, so he took us over that way. He was right, it was quite a cliff, at least one side of it was. |
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On the top of the ledge was a set of 6 to 8" drill holes that were done by the coal company. Probably for surveying and checking the coal seam. They were very deep, dropping a stone in them made quite a calamity as it made its way to the bottom where there was water. | ||
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Here is a video of us dropping in a stone, you can hear, it sounds rather deep. rocks_in_drill_hole.wmv |
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We hung around here for a while occupying ourselves by throwing large rocks off the cliff into the water below, when we noticed 4 dead deer laying in the water. We think they might has jumped over the edge not knowing it was there. | ||
Here is a video. throwing_things_off_mine_ledge.wmv | ||
Alot of the ledge area looked like it could give way at any time, and there were large hunks of rock and coal laying in the middle of the roadway below. | ||
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From there, we headed out to the Rivesville Lookout. But we didn't make it
very far. About half way down the main road, Drew's Dirt Bike let out a
huge plume of smoke. He pulled over to the side of the road, the bike was
still running, and letting out just alittle smoke. We were concerned he
blew a ring, so we had him go back and drop off the bike at Jeff's. Mark
followed him back, and Drew spent the rest of the day riding on the back
of Mark's ATV. I have now declared Drew's nickname to be Smokey.
Everything he rides tends to bellow smoke. |