Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Submitted by: TrailDiva

Ralph's Clean-up and Ride

On February 21st, we rode out to Ralph's in Dawsonville. We arrived around 9 a.m. and began forming a plan. We rode up a trail a short way and found a large fallen tree. We cut and cut and cut until about 1 p.m. They took load after load down and just made the trail all the more muddy. A few trucks took a trail around the lake and collected trash.

After the clean up was done, every one aired down and got ready for the ride. The trails were slick as snot and so very muddy. As my first ride, I was unsure of what to expect. At first Josh and Thomas tried to go up a path and neither made it very far. At that moment, I began to wonder how fun this was acutally going to be. It soon picked up as we sat and watched a minitruck attack the large rock garden. Josh follow soon after. Neither made it extremely far due to the mud.

After a while messing around on the rocks, we decided to make it a little further into the woods. Josh went down Colby Creek with out much trouble. One of the minitrucks decided to go up Colby Creek and had an extremely rough time. I think because he had such a rough time, this inspired Josh to try. I was offered to ride along and it sounded like a good idea at the time. For my first ride I must say it was interesting. Josh got stuck and did a lot of spinning and finally we hear a loud noise. Everyone stopped and just looked. Ted words I quote, "That didn't sound good." Josh leaned over and pulled out this large broken part.

I don't know much about cars, but I knew this didn't look good. From there Josh tried to back down Colby Creek, luckily we hadn't goten far. They had to high jack him over two rocks and winch, tow strap and cut trees out of the way to get him back to a clearing. Ted almost towed him into the lake on two different occasions. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the recovery, being new to this an all, I didn't realize that was sometimes the most fun part. Overall, this ride was tons of fun. It was a great chance to hang out and learn sometime.