The riders….ages 9 to 40 something.

Names:
Paul Crowe (that’s me) and my two sons Alex “Cottonball” Crowe, Jeremy “Q-tip” Crowe
Bur “Enduro” Zeratsky and his son August “Nitro” Zeratsky
Peter “Big Bore” Schultz and his son August “Tree Frog” Schultz

Mission:
Explore a new 8 mile motorcycle enduro trail on a weekend ride to Black River Falls, WI.
Conditions: Saturday night temps 26 degrees, daytime temps upper 50/lower 60’s.

Starting out from Crawford Hills campground on the wide open ATV trails, we headed East looking for the new “Enduro Loop”. This trail is a modified version of the old 20 mile Saddle Mound trail. We experienced fairly tight conditions. Most of the riding involved second gear. There were hills, stumps, logs, some whoops, and plenty of trees to jump out at us. The last 1⁄2 mile was brutal. The trees were too close together to get you bike past them. Several hills were extremely tight and required us to walk our bikes past obstacles. We began to experience overheating and goggle fogging.

We finally crossed the ATV trail. Everyone decided that we would finish the difficult loop another day. We spent the rest of the day blasting down wide, fast fire roads. We saw cranberry bogs, big rocky hills, water holes, banked turns, and everyone top speed at least once. We put on about 27 miles of riding. We had an absolute good time.

Trail Rating: After riding both of the new 8 mile enduro trails this summer, we give them an “A+” for scenery, “B+” for difficulty, and rate the tight section of the East trail for experienced riders only. The entire West loop is difficult but fun. The ATV trails have a perfect mix of loose and hard sand, rocky hills, and hard wet dirt with water holes. We rate the ATV trails a solid “A”.

The campground is nice and clean, with only a few night time riders bothering your rest. For an unsupervised campground it is amazingly nice to stay at. Camping is $10 per night. Black River Falls is open from May 15-Oct 15, so this was our last weekend of riding there for 2005. We will return!!