I used to run Cross-Country way back when I was in High School. One of the weeks of Cross-Country when we didn't have any meets our coach took the opportunity to push us all to the next level or something, this week was called hell week. It typically included a 10-12mile road runs, some intense interval work, a 2mile up hill with a 600-700 foot altitude change, a litter pickup.
Due to the nature of the works during hell week we got to have practices at diffrent locations than we normally ran. These hell week practices took us to the NW Salem area that was/is primarily agricultural. So not a lot of traffic and a lot to look at and observe.
While I didn't have a license and wouldn't for some time I had many friends who did and would like to go on random drives and explore, so we would go out that area of town as it had some pretty good roads to drive. At one particular area there was a large gravel pile.
One evening we met up with Scott who had gotten his Mom's Jeep for the evening. We went out for a drive. While we didn't set out to fine the gravel pile we stumbled across it. We all saw it and some of us weren't so sure. But it wasn't our Jeep so who were we to decide. Scott decided we needed to climb it. A couple of us got out and watched and were ready to go get help if he landed on the roof. He got part way up the side before sliding back or halting movement all together the gravel was too lose to climb at such a steep angle.
We would go back from time to time with Scott in the Jeep and anything else that had four wheel drive to attempt to master the pile. We tried from various angles in various vehicles. It was fun but we didn't ever get a vehicle to the top of the pile.
Had we actually done it we would have other problems like how to get it back down with out doing a noseplant or otherwise damaging the vehicle of the outing....
Posted by Ben at July 24, 2008 10:15 AM