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The 2000 Dakota Territory Challenge was unfortunately canceled due to the dry conditions and the very near by Jasper Forest Fire! The fire consumed more than 80,000 acres. At it's peak officials say it was burning 43 acres a minute!!! The Black Hills National Forest district closed all off-road travel and banned all camp fires. This was a huge blow to our club! We will survive but times will be tough for the next year or so while we recoup our losses. We will continue to have our event again next year. Those who were registered for this years event have the option to carry their registration over to next year or receive a refund. We did what we could for those who had already made the trip. We had already paid for the campground so everyone who stuck around got free camping during the regular event days. We did some sight seeing tours and a couple of easy trips on the allowable Forest Service roads. On what was supposed to be the second day of the event we got news that the roads near the northern most part of the fire area were open. So we ventured out to try and catch at least a glimpse of the destruction that shut down our event. We got a lot closer than we had expected!! We were driving right next to and in between burned areas. There were still stumps burning along the road!!! There was smoke everywhere from smoldering piles!!! The road we were on was narrow and had Fire Fighting vehicles everywhere. We stopped several people to make sure it was OK that we were driving on this road. Each and every person we asked, even a representative of the Forest Service said we were OK and the road is open. So we continued on the Bear Mountain Lookout, were we hoped to get a look at a larger area from the Lookout Tower. Unfortunately the individual in the Lookout was not informed the road had been opened and was not happy to see us. So as not to upset anyone any further we turned around and headed back out of the area. As we did that the area Supervisor showed up and assured us that we were not doing anything illegal and the road was indeed open. But we as responsible 4 wheelers told him we would vacate the area because we could see we were upsetting some folks and we did not really need to be this close to the action and felt that we could be a hindrance with the 29 vehicles in our group. After leaving the fire area we headed north to the Ditch Creek campground for a lunch break. After the much needed break we made a quick stop at what appeared to be an old sandstone mine, one of many old abandon mines in the Black Hills. From there we headed out to the highway and back to camp. Wow! what a day, 100 miles on the odometer. Here are some pictures of the adventure taken by Vicki and John Stracota from Minnesota. These were taken with a digital camera, then down loaded onto John's laptop at the campground. He then make a cool presentation out of them so everyone to watch on his laptop. Then with the CD burner in his laptop put these pictures on a CD for me so I could put them on our web site. Thank You John and Vicki!!! |
