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OF 750. ONLY 200
By Ron Schneiders
Photos by Ron 8< Ellen Scbneiders
RED MOUNTAIN, CAL., Nov. 7, 1971
- "This'll keep the snivelers talking to
themselves for weeks," observed a
rather husky member of one of the
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older desert clubs. He was talking about
the annual Jackass Enduro and 1 rather
suspect that, however, he defines
sniveler, he's right. What they're going
to talk about, though, I'm not sure. A
good percentage of the 750 entry
(which must contain a good bunch of
the snivelers) was out of the event by
the first check! Twelve miles of riding
doesn't give one much to talk about.
But enough of that concept.
The rust five miles was just a 30 mph
warm-up over desert trails. Most
everyone dropped a couple minutes, but
it was easy to get back on schedule
Ooops!
because the n.ext section was 12 mph
and rather easy at the beginning. There
was a neat ledge about three or four feet
high in a tight little sandwash that had a
few riders stopped. One rider had
apparently already abandoned the run
and was serving as director, telling
everyone to line up -and helping them
lower t!teir bikes gingerly over the ledge.
1 didn't have time for such foolishness
so 1 just skirted the crowd and pushed
my Sachs over the edge. Anything on it
that will break at less than 20 mph,
broke a long time ago.
At the end of the 12 mph section was
a downhill and that was a sight to
behold. When I got there, there were
easily 200 bikes on the hill trying to
make their way down. There was a lot
of falling a lot of stopping, and a lot of
just plain dithering. It was also the end
of the run for quite a few riders.
Actually, it was quite a magnificent
downhill. People at the bottom looked
very small, and you had an outstanding
view for miles and miles. The surface
was broken granite rock set in a talcum
powder base.' A few riders were
complaining that it was a bottleneck,
but in fact it wasn't. Here there were a
number of routes down and it was
possible to pass stopped riders all along
the way. All it took was lots of
determination, skill and GUTS.
In away, that hill signalled the start
of the real enduro. From there on it was
IOck, rock, and more rock into the noon
check. We had several other good
downhills, but nothing to compare with
that fust one. We went through the
pinnacles on the same trail that was
used on the first day of this year's
Greenhorn and worked our way up and
down some deep, deep sandwashes.
After the noon che.ck it was pretty
lonely out there. More than half of the
riders had already quite (or had been
