The Yor-Pil-Bull ride on July 29th was real success. We had 17 riders show up on 11 ATVs and 2 UTV. We left the parking at 9:30 am a half hour later than planned. We travelled 10 Km on the road to reach the trail, shortly after we entered the trail we had a breakdown. One of the ATV had a charging issue, the rider did have a spare battery, replaced it and decided to return to his truck with his friend. So we lost 2 ATVs right at the beginning of the ride. We crossed the first deep water hole shortly after that with no incidents. We made our way to Yorston and stopped for a break at Linger Lake. By this time we had made 3 deep water crossing, everyone were expressing how it was fun to tackle the water and the trail. We then proceeded to Pilgrim Chute, we arrived at approximately 12:20 and stopped at Pilgrim for Lunch. One of the UTV rider had brought a small drone and flew over the chutes and the river. We left Pilgrim at approximately 1:00pm and went to the Sturgeon River lookout. Again the trail was challenging but everyone made it through and had fun. We stayed approximately 20 minutes and then made our way to Bull Lake. We had to cross a river at the Plate, it was full of boulders to drive over to get across. Everyone made it through but one ATV ripped his skid plate off. After a quick tie wrap job to secure the skid plate we made our way to Bull with no incidents. On our way back at the Plate we had one ATV shut off for no apparent reason and had to be towed out of the river. We then proceeded 3 km towing the ATV to clear the way as some people were waiting for us the get through so they could go by. When we stopped, we started checking the ATV to figure out why it shut off. Turns out the driver had accidentally hit the kill switch as he was maneuvering over the boulders in the river. We slowly made our way back to the parking and arrived at the trucks at 5:00pm. Everyone expressed how it was a really nice ride and challenging, which was what they were looking for.
I want to thank everyone that showed up, we were a great bunch of riders. I really enjoyed leading and also thank you to the awesome Tail, Ray Beruchon, you did a great job tailing and helping with the scouting.
Joel Falardeau
Ride Lead.
