GonZookin 2004

Brian (TippyZuk) and myself arrived early Friday morning for a full day of wheeling at Paragon Adventure Park for the 4th annual GonZookin Suzuki Event. Everyone signed in and went to the staging area so we could be split up into groups based on our abilities. We went in a small group that included Randy (Zooky on the BBS), Glen Loud (Wildweasel on the BBS), Rich (? last name) and myself. 

We headed straight for the black trails which are the harder, more technical trails which have very steep rocky hill climbs, quite a few large cliffs to climb up, and where you really need to take the right line or you WILL roll, break something, or just get wedged into a nice hole between some of the huge rocks that they have covering their mountainsides. 

There were a lot of nice sized boulders to climb which were even challenging for the best built rigs. Here you can see Glen flexing out his coil suspension out on his custom built Tracker. You cannot tell from the pic, but this is one of the hardest spots on the "Q" trail with a 3 foot vertical V shaped wall between two rocks and Glen lost the bead on his right front tire getting through it!

The first day the weather was perfectly sunny and there was a nice little breeze blowing through the park. The second day it drizzled all day, but it didn't stop people from competing in the Top Zuk Challenge (TZC)! The rain made the rocks a little slippery, but these rocks are coarse enough to get traction, even in the rain. 

The mountainside is steeper than it looks and even going down is truly a challenge!

During the Top Zuk Challenge spectators stood back and watched the Zuk's traverse the deep crevices and  and climb the slippery (when wet) hillsides.

Off-camber is fun until you get to that point of maximum pucker. Here Sean is about to lay it on it's side, but rocks it back and forth then pulls it out at the last second and stomps on the skinny pedal to get it over the ledge.

Another view of the same spot from farther away. The Zuk's leaning pretty hard!

The hill climbs are tough and Yankee Tim and Jeff (LuvmyZuki on the BBS) made sure that the TZC rock course was all but impassable. Getting between the cones was hard and everyone hit cones. I ran over at least 3 cones myself. 

Randy (Zooky) was nothing but impressive! Blowing through the first Top Zuk Challenge obstacle and making record breaking time to the top of the mountainside.....4 minutes....that may be a new TZC course record!

Just another off-camber TZC pic. Most of the pic's we took with out disposable camera did not come out at all!

Here is Glen (Wildweasel) maneuvering his Tracker to climb a steep section of rocks during the TZC.

More pic's to come .....and maybe some video if I can get it from Yankee Tim!

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