Saturday morning after the group picture we joined one of the two moderate groups to try out even more of the trails.  We had about 6 vehicles in our group, as did the other group.  We rode around until about 1 and broke for lunch.  After lunch a small group of us went back out for more trail riding until about 4.  At this point we started loading up our gear in preparation for the night’s events.  Saturday night the SOA provided a BBQ dinner from Bobby Q’s Restaurant and live entertainment from Iron Horse Bluegrass Band, both the food and entertainment were excellent.

Every night door prizes were given out, with the most highly sought after prizes being reserved for Saturday night’s drawing.  After everyone had a chance to eat and visit, the big door prizes were given out, as well as the overall awards for the weekend.  These awards were a huge hit and themed such as “Worst Break”, “Worst Paint Job”, “Longest Road Trip without a Trailer”, and “People’s Choice”.

Door Prize Winner

The winner of Extreme Roc Rigs door prize was Tim Shepard of Baltimore, OH.

Extreme Roc Rigs would like to thank the Scrambler Owners Associations for allowing us to join them during this event.  This group of individuals are a unique and friendly group just like the Jeep Scrambler.

Extreme Roc Rigs was in attendance for the 2010 New Years Day trail ride at Golden Mountain OHV park, (GMP) in Sparta, TN.  Golden Mountain OHV Park is a family oriented recreational area that has over 40 trails on 500 acres for trail riding with ATV’s, Motorcycles, Jeeps, Trucks, and UTV’s.  GMP has pavilions on site that can be rented for get-togethers, family reunions, or to use as shelter for camping. A playground is near the campground so kids can play while dinner is being prepared.  GMP also has a basketball court, volleyball court, and 2 ponds for catch and release fishing.  The park also offers bunk houses and motor home hook-ups for those staying a few days.  GMP is open from 2pm on Friday till 6pm on Sunday.

For the New Years Day Ride GMP was open from Thursday, December 31^st till Sunday January 3^rd.  We arrived at the park on Thursday, December 31^st about 10:30AM.  On Thursday the weather conditions were pretty nasty.  The temperature was about 40 degrees and raining.  The trails had already been saturated with rain from the previous days so we knew we were in for a slick time.  While preparing our Jeeps to trail ride a fellow by the name of Steve asked us if we wanted him to show us around the park.  Since no one in our party had previously been to GMP, we agreed.  We spent Thursday getting to know the park and where all the different trails lead.  Traction was a problem all day.  Just to get from the parking lot to the trailhead of Trail #1 you had to be in 4-wheeldrive.  Not only were the rocks wet but once crossed by a vehicle they were covered in mud.  Some of the least difficult trails were now ones that required aggressive mud tires, lockers front and rear and a winch just to get up.  Since traction was not easily found we stayed on the moderate trails, knowing we had two more days of wheeling planned.

On New Years day we met up with Bryan Cole of ColeWorx and Adam Woodlee of Wide Open Design.  ColeWorX and Wide Open Design both build custom, turn key, high horsepower rock buggies. The details that go into these rigs is imressive as well as their ability to perform.  As the day progressed and the trail difficulty increased parts began to break.  The group split up about mid day when Bryan Cole’s Highlighter decided it needed a new battery.  Over the past few months Bryan has been in the process of replacing his NV4500 transmission with a TH400.  During a winching exercise the battery died due to the Highlighter not being ran.  After finding an extra battery that was being used to run accessories on one of the rigs in our group we got the Highlighter running and to the top of the trail.  The Big Yellow Jeep Scrambler that was behind the Highlighter sat on a new set of 47” Super Swamper LTBs.  While several attempts to climb the stair steps of Trail 13 failed it was time for more aggressive approach.  During this attempt the right front tire found the jagged edge of a rock and punchered a hole large enough to place two thumbs inside the sidewall.  A trail repair was done to the side wall and we headed back to camp to perform a more permanent fix to the large hole.  Once the tire was patched from the inside we all loaded up to find some grub.

On Saturday Extreme Roc Rigs and ColeWorX decided to head to Wheeling in the Country (WITC) which is located in Summertown, TN.  This park has been open for several years but is a park that none of the members of Extreme Roc Rigs had visited before.  Once Bryan found this out he invited us to let him show us around.  We arrived at WITC about 2pm and after a few minor repairs from the previous day we were ready to hit the trails.  WITC is famous for its New Years day trail rides even late on Saturday afternoon there were several hundred vehicles ranging from stock ATVs to highly modified ATVs and VW bugs to custom built ColeWorX rock buggies.  We didn’t get to trail ride as much as we hoped because of a trail repair but we promised the ColeWorX bunch that we would come back so they could give us the full tour.