I'm gonna do this in separate chunks so you guys can comment if you want and because it’s a LONG story. Incident I have a story to tell. And let me begin by saying that I unfortunately have no pictures of the event. This is kinda old news, it happened last winter when my Griz was about three months old and had only about 800 miles on it (I ride a lot.) A buddy of mine had been on my case for a while to go out and ride the ice on a creek out behind his parents house (Crooked Creek.) After a LOT of convincing I finally was talked into going with him and his brother. It is a pretty substantial little body of water (as it turns out) it varies in width and depth but is never more than about 10' deep and never more than about 75' wide (at least that I saw.) It snakes along for miles and connects to the St. Lawrence River. I never made it that far though… The ice was a little thinner than I would have liked but he and his brother both assured me that there would be no issue if I just followed them. They know the area and could steer clear of thinner areas and they were cutting holes and testing thickness every 5 minutes or so. We all know what happened next. 7 miles out on out trip they stopped to do donuts on a wide corner. I was doing very tight and fast 4 wheel drive donuts. When I came to a stop, the back of the Griz dropped through. It held on by the front for half a second. Then the tip angle sensor killed the motor and I jumped off. I landed on my chest and commando crawled away from the hole. I got to my feet about 20 feet away just in time to watch my Brand New Grizzly 700 EPS turn upside down and disappear through the ice.
Follow-up A couple of things I forgot… Neither of the storage compartments got ANY water in them, which is good cuz I had my 12V compressor in the one under the seat. The seat took MONTHS to get all the water out of. It used to freeze solid when I would ride in the winter. I now have almost 4k on it since the "drowning" no issues other than I had an eps failure that turned out to be a dirty connector. I LOVE MY GRIZZLY and That’s All Folks!
eace::rocker:
I HOPE that there is no sequel to this story. But all in all It turned out OK and only cost me a case of beer and a few grey hairs. I learned a lot about what to do when the ice breaks and there is something under it as precious as a Grizzly.:banana:
There was a funny bit in the middle I left out. When we got back to the truck to load the Grizzly, Josh and Matt's father was waiting (he wasn't supposed to know you might remember.) They begged me not to let on what happened so I had to try and come up with a story to explain why a 3 month old wheeler was getting loaded into the back of my truck with a tractor bucket rather than under its own power. I don't like lying. Especially when I have to come up with a story on the fly, in a situation that can only be explained one way. So what I said was that we were out horsing around and it just quit. There was a lot of fresh powder, maybe the air filter got wet. Now that is all true but laughably transparent LOL. In my flimsy story's defense The Griz was covered in snow from being towed, and there was no obvious signs (from a distance) that it had been under water. The guy totally bought my story too. Until... we pushed it up the ramp into the truck with the tractor and water started pouring from the muffler. The guy looks at it, looks at me, and I swear to god say "I think you sucked up a lot of water." Josh said his Mother told him about a week later that two nights after the incident his dad sat straight up in bed and shouted; "Those boys put that effin wheeler through the ice!" He isn't the brightest crayon in the box… OMG did I laugh when I heard that.:rofl: No Lie
awesome story mate, no life lost and a great recovery, lucky your mates brother was a salvage part timer hey?
good on you for not selling her straight away, that's something only an honest person would do eace:
I know my little story is old now... But for anyone who stumbles across it I would like to update that my Griz still has had no issues from this event and it just turned over 7,400 miles completing the same ice trip (for the first time since then) and it stayed on top of the ice this time.... A little over 60 miles if it all over a foot thick
I was going to offer to bring a camera if you wanted to do that again.
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