Pirate Ride #4 Birthday DH
WoodRatRedTail, Hoopa. January 29th, 2006

Ride #4 Photo Gallery
Fresh Points

Heavy rains preceeded the first Pirate Ride of the new year creating many murmurs about tire choice and just how much gear would be needed to weather Sunday's storms.  On race day expectations were exceeded as more then forty some riders, from as far as Oregon, appeared to practice on the soaked course.  With so many riders shuttling lagged early in the morning, until soaked riders decided to volunteer for driving after experiencing that which Big Hill had to offer.  The course was a combination of two very different trails, the fairly fresh Wood Rat, and the seasoned course known as the Red Tail Hawk.  Small patches of snow lingered at the shuttle drop off, confirming that the days greatest challenge would be to survive the frigid fairy to the top.  The Wood Rat, being a more recent cut, was sloppy beyond description.  The trails steep straights to extreme off cambers quickly became churned into the slimiest of substrate, beneath the numerous riders running the trail.  The Rat's final obstacle is a g-out into a bob sled like ditch which was a flowing creek all day.  The obsurdity of the section was such that riders found themselves laughing at the slopeful suffering, uttering such exclamations as "I'm in the river of chocolate, where the hell are my umpaloompas!"  By the end of practice it was nearly impossible to control speed and maintain a consistent line.  Indeed any pre runs were of little benefit come the Semi Finals as the upper third was evolving from rider to rider.  Even in the more rocky and cinsistent lower section slippery sticks and roots were becoming exposed making it impossible to know what was around the next bend.  In the Semi an unfortunate lack of course marking lead to two riders taking a wrong turn and flying to the bottom of the parallel Slippery Eel DH trail.  Of those who did complete the run none were able to stay upright throughout, with the exception of Joe Joerger.  Placing third in the Final, Joerger Semi run would have competed for fast time had he not stopped to check on Step Lowery whose tremendous O.T.B. accident ended her hopes of a complete run.  Top ranked Pirate competitor Chad Mitchell returned to vie for the Pirate Podium, but it was equipment choice that ended his day in the Semi.  Mitchell's single speed, SINGLE BRAKE, hardtail could not handle the trails slimy upper section.  The top five all experienced multiple wipeouts, yet the inability to slow down in the slop lead to fast times.  Junior Expert SWD/Azonic Rider, Robbie Rhall, had a tremendous Semi run.  His complaint of brake levers pulling to the bars helped him maintain an incredible pace as he qualified second overall.  Top time, and second fastest of the day was set by fellow Azonic/Revolution rider Justin Graves.  Despite several dismounts a timely tree snag, and rolling down the final fourth of the course on a rear flat Graves' similar brake to bar method had set him comfortably ahead of the field.
Time coordinating fiascos delayed the final.  The finish line clock was reset, requiring finish line chief, Tom Graves, to rally to the top of the hill in order to resink the watches.  The delay was enough to discourage much of the field from running again.  Yet the favorites were all in attendance for one more shot at the disintegrating trail.  A noticeably more relaxed pace was set out of the start house as riders realized relaxing was the only way to go fast on the challenging course.  Again bails were the trend as fresh obstacles and impossible slime slowed the field.  The majority of times slowed on the beat course.  Joel Graves and Jason Reiman were two of the five riders who were able to improve their times, shaving 19 and 4 seconds on their second attempts.  Joerger and Todd were also able to improve their first run times but it was not enough to match the crashless run of Graves.  Adding brakes for the final slowing down equated to speeding up as Graves maintained the upright posisition, almost catching Matheson at the finish and bettering his Semi time by 5 seconds.
As awards concluded all were frozen, yet thankful and unanimous in admitting it could have been much worse.

	Seeding Run				Final Run
1	Justin Graves	4:16		1	Justin Graves	4:11.0
2	Robbie Rhall (JR.)	4:45		2	Jake Todd	4:40.8
3	Jake Todd	4:51		3	Joe Joerger	4:59.5
4	Hank Matheson	4:52		4	Robbie Rhall (JR.)	5:00.4
5	Andrew Way	4:59		5	Hank Matheson	5:03.0
6	Jed Olson	5:05		6	Jed Olson	5:07.5
7	Jason Reiman	5:12		7	Jason Reiman	5:08.6
8	Joel Graves	5:32		8	Joel Graves	5:13.0
9	John (yellow Bullit)	5:40		9	Jason Allen (H.T.)	5:45.3
10	Jason Allen (H.T.)	5:40		10	Jason Davis	6:27.3
11	Chad Mitchell (H.T.)	5:43		11	Mark Matthews (JR.)(H.T.)	6:45.7
12	Jason Davis	6:20		12	Trevor Graham (JR.)	7:26.3
13	Dan Grijalva	6:25		13	Dan Anderson (JR.)	8:38.4
14	Dan Arbuckle (H.T.)	6:40		14	Christina Reiman	9:03.6
15	Curtis Lonn	6:57		15	Phil Catlain (JR.)	10:57.6
16	Carl Hesselein	7:08		16	Carl Hesselein	20:32.0
17	Trevor Graham (JR.)	7:16
18	Ray Marshall	7:40
19	Andy Page	8:08
20	Dan Anderson (JR.)(H.T.)	8:26
21	Christina Reiman	8:53
22	Winston Sauber	9:17
23	Joe Joerger	9:18
24	Phil Catlain (JR.)	9:34
25	Sandy Ross	DNF
26	John Martin	DNF
27	Steph Lowery	DNF
28	Jana Daadall	DNS
29	Mark Matthews (JR.)(H.T.)	DNS

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