So afew days ago I head out on a 100 km ride through some west coast forest, on the logging roads. I drove the '17 P500 and baby brother was on the '13 Honda 500 Rubicon quad. Started out nice...
Most of the ride was on more wide-open, gravel trails. We stopped for lunch at the top of a powerline over-looking our goal, the town of Port Alberni. One choice of direction was a bit of a gnarly down-hill. I asked my bro to check it out with the quad. If he thought the P500 could do it, then I'd follow. He stopped for a second at the top of it, then all I saw was the quad going over and kicking the rider off, 75 feet down a steep slope. I've seen YouTube videos of machines going over, but it's different when you see it live...
If you zoom in, you can see his legs sticking out to the left of the machine. He slid face down the hill on his belly. As he slid, the machine hit him twice and landed on top of him. He crawled out. He was in shock abit and confused. He'd broken three ribs and initially was struggling to catch his breath. First words he said were 'rocks are hard'. It's hard to tell from the images, but it was a steep hill. I was worried if I touched the machine it would continue tumbling another 500 feet to the bottom of the hill.
Assisted the victim up the hill to where I had sensibly decided to park the P500. Then I started to figure out how to get the quad on it's wheels and up the hill. I figured we'd tow it back to the truck. I tied the machine to a big rock in case it did start to go.
I used a come-along to get the quad on it's side. It got too tight to work with the come-along so I decided to do the rest of the job with the P500's winch (a Superwinch 3500SR). It was 85 foot away so used some rope to extend my reach.
Two motorcycle kids came by and helped with the recovery. Once the machine was at the top, I let the oil settle down and it started first try. The beating it took and it still ran fine. The P500 was just excellent for winching the quad up. The winch never heated up. Bro drove the P500 the 35 kms to the truck... every pothole was painful. I drove the banged up atv.
What did I learn?
- don't let your brother decide if a trail is safe. Look yourself. He said he never would have tried that descent... doesn't know why he did.
- you can't have enough line. I used a 16 foot tow-strap, a 12 foot load strap, short pieces to tie the quad off to the rock, a small come-along, and my 50 feet of 5/16" marine braid line. All I had left was about 100 ft of 1/4" poly.
- rocks are hard. He's got 3 broken ribs, is on pain-killers and the docs say it'll take 6 weeks to recover. Lucky it wasn't worse. His full-face helmet is a write-off, but kept his noggin intact.
- Hondas are tough. I watched that thing tumble down a shot-rock hill and land upside down. All I need is a new front bumper, front rack and handle-bar.
Ride safe, Al
Most of the ride was on more wide-open, gravel trails. We stopped for lunch at the top of a powerline over-looking our goal, the town of Port Alberni. One choice of direction was a bit of a gnarly down-hill. I asked my bro to check it out with the quad. If he thought the P500 could do it, then I'd follow. He stopped for a second at the top of it, then all I saw was the quad going over and kicking the rider off, 75 feet down a steep slope. I've seen YouTube videos of machines going over, but it's different when you see it live...
If you zoom in, you can see his legs sticking out to the left of the machine. He slid face down the hill on his belly. As he slid, the machine hit him twice and landed on top of him. He crawled out. He was in shock abit and confused. He'd broken three ribs and initially was struggling to catch his breath. First words he said were 'rocks are hard'. It's hard to tell from the images, but it was a steep hill. I was worried if I touched the machine it would continue tumbling another 500 feet to the bottom of the hill.
Assisted the victim up the hill to where I had sensibly decided to park the P500. Then I started to figure out how to get the quad on it's wheels and up the hill. I figured we'd tow it back to the truck. I tied the machine to a big rock in case it did start to go.
I used a come-along to get the quad on it's side. It got too tight to work with the come-along so I decided to do the rest of the job with the P500's winch (a Superwinch 3500SR). It was 85 foot away so used some rope to extend my reach.
Two motorcycle kids came by and helped with the recovery. Once the machine was at the top, I let the oil settle down and it started first try. The beating it took and it still ran fine. The P500 was just excellent for winching the quad up. The winch never heated up. Bro drove the P500 the 35 kms to the truck... every pothole was painful. I drove the banged up atv.
What did I learn?
- don't let your brother decide if a trail is safe. Look yourself. He said he never would have tried that descent... doesn't know why he did.
- you can't have enough line. I used a 16 foot tow-strap, a 12 foot load strap, short pieces to tie the quad off to the rock, a small come-along, and my 50 feet of 5/16" marine braid line. All I had left was about 100 ft of 1/4" poly.
- rocks are hard. He's got 3 broken ribs, is on pain-killers and the docs say it'll take 6 weeks to recover. Lucky it wasn't worse. His full-face helmet is a write-off, but kept his noggin intact.
- Hondas are tough. I watched that thing tumble down a shot-rock hill and land upside down. All I need is a new front bumper, front rack and handle-bar.
Ride safe, Al
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