Never go down a hill that you can't ride up!

[Hank Moody]

I found this post on Thumper Talk and it is Safiri's number 1 rule, "Never go down a hill that you can't ride up!"

http://www.thumpertalk.com/forum/showth ... p?t=683299

[Hayden]

Glad I ride with a bunch of guys that would never do that ............OH wait a minute. I do remember Troy going down the great unknown over on Fly Gap last year. I do believe Dave O, Kyle and I looked on from the top and watched the carnage.


Hayden

[xr-nut]

So im sittin' here looking at these pic's and thinking to myself...........in the third, fourth and fifth pics it looks like the valley goes down hill to the left and uphill to the right(in the pics) and wondering why dont you just RIDE the motorcycles either direction? its not like they were on klrs, or anything of that size. all three are full off road dirtbikes. further down the pics they showed one guy(wrestling an orange bike) walking that bike down? isnt that why they put those round rubber things on either end?? RIDE the darn thing. then further down the pic list, i finally see the real trouble here.......sand. its tuff enough to ride in, let alone uphill!! still im wondering why, since they were already at the bottom, why not just ride them out??? wheres this place at, im up for a challenge, no helicopters needed.

[safiri]

From the first post on that thread:
"After five hours of dragging/pulling/pushing/lowering the bikes over all kinds of obstacles trying to work their way to the bottom of the canyon they hit a point where they were screwed and couldn't go any further."

I am hoping that they got into trouble first, and this describes their attempt to ride down and out (like XR suggests). If, on the other hand, they spent five hours getting into trouble, then shame. This is a case where spending the time to hike the egress route (before lowering bikes over obstacles) would have made sense. From experience (and looking at those pictures) this kind of terrain often leads to large drops inside of steep canyons.

Glad that I WASN'T there!

[troy]

I suppose it can be hard to judge from the photos, but I don't have much sympathy for those guys. I sure as heck would not have attempted to ride down into that.

That said....Hayden is correct except he has the people wrong. I have had one experience in Arkansas where I did in fact ride down something I could not have ridden back up and I did not know for sure where the trail went. I had a good idea where it went--but was not sure. If that trail had not worked out, it would have taken the 3 of us who went down a few hours to lug the 3 bikes back up. I was not in the lead and let myself be led down it. It was one of those trails where it kept getting steeper and was very narrow--turning around would be a big effort. So I took the lazy option of continuing down. It was David O, Dennis, and I that went down it. To give this some perspective, I think I heard Hayden say "I'm not going down that." He and the rest of the group turned around and rode back out. Dennis and I ended up helping each other drag our bikes down the last 30 feet or so. David O made it down by himself on a big XRR. A good trials rider could probably ride up it, but I'm no trials rider and my bike aint no trials bike.

[Hayden]

AHHH thats right. Dave O did go down. It was Kyle, myself and Ol Hank Moody.

Hayden