I was a newbie to WF, and this was also my first trail run ever. The experience was a BLAST - awesome time on the trails (had no idea what my rig was capable of), super friendly people, excellent food at the pot luck...
HOWEVER, I considered the administration/organization of the event to be TERRIBLE. I'm a governement engineer, so documentation is my life. In this regard, I might be a little biased, but the documentation available at the event was a half a step above non-existant. The only tangible instruction I was provided with was a map of the park, which was basically a joke - it only provided a rough idea of the trails, and didn't mark any of them as "green", "orange", or "red". When I asked both the guy at the Badlands registration desk and the lady at the guard shack where the Winterfest group was, they both had no idea what I was talking about (the large group of XJs did give it away, granted). I only managed to catch the appropriate line and CB channel by listening to people yelling at each other as the rigs were lining up. Nobody told me about calling "clear" after each obstacle (figured it out after the tail-gunner complained to my buddy behind me - also a newbie - for not doing it).
Another gripe I've got... The schedule for Friday as posted in the registration thread:
Friday:
9:00AM Registration
10:30AM Trail runs
1:00PM Quarry Lunch, play time, Jeep games
2:00PM Trail runs (pick-up runs)
6:00PM Pot luck at campground
Attica Family Campground
3970 N. Xavier Road, Attica, Indiana 47918 - (765) 762-6189
http://www.atticacamping.com
To me, this meant that registration was running until 10:30. So when me and my buddy showed up just before 10, imagine our exasperation when we got a snarky attitude for showing up "late".
Also, I'm a little honked off at the "tech inspection". I installed some tow-hooks, which are bolted to brackets that mount to the front of my subframe rails (sandwiched between them and the bumper mount brackets). My grill guard is mounted to the same brackets. For some reason, I was given quite a bit of grief about the way they were mounted, and told to "fix it" before coming back next year. My buddy has hooks mounted in EXACTLY THE SAME FASHION - the only difference is that he has a large bumper cover (was driving the stock Grand in the back), so they couldn't actually see the mounts. They told him he was "just fine".
All those things really didn't get to me until Saturday, though, when I witnessed the ultimate failure of this event. All those other things can be forgiven, since
![NAXJA Smiley NAXJA NAXJA](/data/assets/smilies/naxjasmiley.gif)
is a member run and supported organization, but this was completely unacceptable.
I was in the back of the line on Saturday, just in front of Jeff, just behind the Jimmy. When the Jimmy got stuck on the trail beyond the quarry, we called on the CB for the blue Cherokee in front of him not to pull away - and off he went (I have video evidence, which I'll be sure to post as soon as I get it uploaded).
As far as I'm concerned, the fee I paid was for the trial runs (no complaints on that). And I THOUGHT the point of the trial run was so that if someone did get stuck, everybody (except the lead and tail, of course) had someone in front of and behind them to help get them out. I even recall (probably have it on video as well) someone (Bob?) calling out at the beginning of the run for us all to keep an eye on the guy in front of and behind us as much as possible. So WHAT THE CRAP!?
Again, I did have alot of fun, which outweighed my complaints, but I'll give the same ultimatum that I received: fix it before next year. Primarily, make it a more newbie-friendly environment.