Nelson Hills ride report

Lenny · March 9, 2009

Just got back from Nelson Hills near Boulder, Nevada. New suspension is much better, Fox shocks on all four corners. Needs some tuning but I first need to understand just what it's doing and why. Nelson Hills is just like the name implies, hills. The area is aprox 10 miles x 12 miles or 120 square miles of mountain foothills. We camped there for three nights. Trails are nearly endless. They roll up and down, in and out of washes, up washes and are nearly constantly turning. There is a ton of great climbing challenges comming out of the washes. Many times my wife said, "your not going to try that, are you?". I saw a lot of stuff I wouldn't try but as the days went on I found that I could point the Trooper at, well, nearly anything, and it just went up it. This was happening dispite that I had 120 pounds of survival gear on the top rack, two 5 gallon cans of extra fuel, 5 gallons of water and ice, and to add insult to injury, I not only had my 2 dobermans at 70 lbs. each but was babysitting my daughters 65 pound dog and of course my wife and I, a spare, and 20 pounds of jacks and tools. Even though I was loaded down, It didn't seem to matter. Ran the steeper stuff in second, general hills in third and some in fourth. This engine pulls pretty good at low RPM. Eventually cut a sidewall but had a spare, Hey I'm no dummy. Well, I forgot that I used a different lug nut to hold on the spare and I didn't have a socket to fit. Fortunatey, I saw a couple of cars parked with people about 1/4 mile away. Walked down and got a socket. Went back and proceeded to split it. Walked back again, offered $20 for the broken socket and asked if someone had a non tiawain socket and got a Craftsman. Made it back ok.

THE CLIMB

When I first got to the camping site, I saw a hill. Let me rephrase that, a serious hill. I've done a lot of competive motorcycle hillclimbing and If your going to try this hill you better not be a beginner, a novice or an intermediate rider. You better know what your doing or your going to get hurt. I couldn't resist, walked over and took a look and thought I think the Trooper would give it a honest try. The Trooper won but I got beat (scared) and decided that, yes, it would climb it but the consequenses of getting turned sideways was way too serious. Maybe if I was twenty and a lot dumber. I took pictures of where I stopped on the hill and some pics of the hill showing where my front stopped from different perspectives so you can get a feel of just how intimidating this hill is. I stopped on the steepest part of the hill with another equally steep part about 40' to 50' ahead of me. This section was steep enough that the loose broken rock that you see elseware on the hill wouldn't stay on this part of the slope. It was just exposed rock. Just before getting to the stopping point you see in the picture, I gave it more gas and I was actually acceleratiing as I went up the rock secton. Thats all I needed to see, It wanted to go all the way and would have. Amazing machine.

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Lenny

Kinarfi · March 9, 2009

That's some hill, good story, Get an old tire iron and a deep socket out your junk tool stash and weld them together., I think I ended up using an 11/16 deep socket with 1/2 in. drive, it fits kind of tight, which is nice because the corners don't get rolled off.

kinarfi