Starting the day under sunny skies with a fair breeze, the friends and family of MasterCraft Seats all gathered at the newly designed and vinyl wrapped MasterCraft Seats race hauler in the parking lot of the Spanish Trails Arena where they were each greeted by MasterCraft CEO – Robbie Pierce and his staff.
With Moab’s finest hot coffee and the City Market’s tastiest donuts served during signups, MasterCraft staffers Princess Nicole, Princess Dorothy, Young Princess Alexis and Princess Brittany handed out freebies of hats and gear bags, FABTECH Beef Jerky, FABTECH soft coolers and of course DirtNewz stickers, to a big group of trail ride participants. With the paparazzi secured in various rock rigs the Mastercraft crew was ready to hit the trail.
MasterCraft Seats hosted their 2nd Annual Trail Ride at the 40th Easter Jeep Safari in the beautiful Moab, Utah. Red Rock 4Wheelers Kingpin – Tony Eyman arranged this year’s ride to run on the Moab Rim Trail, which provides incredible scenic views of the entire Moab Valley. However, a glitch in the morning’s activities with the BLM resulted in a trail change to the Poison Spyder Trail, which turned out to have stunning views of the Utah’s snowcapped mountains and challenging obstacles that tested some of the nation’s top manufacturers off road equipment. This was all under the watchful eyes of the nation’s top professional rock crawlers.
Word was quickly sent ahead to the MasterCraft sponsored professional rock crawlers who were all staged at the Moab Rim Trail. Soon enough the MasterCraft Parade motored down Moab’s Main Street and it wasn’t long after that when the crew hit the red dirt and aired their rubber down.
Interview with Dean Bulloch & Tracy Jordan:
Interview with the Fox shox Crew:
The professional rock crawlers joining the MasterCraft jaunt included, famed off road racing legend and professional rock crawling winner Goodyear sponsored - Walker Evans, 2005 PRO Rock Champions – Dean Bulloch and Karl Munford, 2005 UROC Supercrawl Champion – Tracy Jordan, MasterCraft All-Star - Aaron Dusenbery, Skyjacker All-Star Garrett Sisson, Rage 4th’s Lance Clifford, Xtreme Engineering All-Star Nick Sessions and the 2003 UROC SuperCrawl Champions Jon Bundrant and Larry McRae.
Interview with Julio Monroy from Trail Sport 4x4:
Interview with Larry McRae:
The first obstacle, a dry waterfall, was a serious steep vertical climb pushing 75 degrees, however an easy go around about 10 feet to the passenger side allowed the not so daring to push up the obstacle. Several attempts by a few Jeeps were made at the seven foot vertical climb, but no one was able to climb the slick rock until Supercrawl Champion Jon Bundrant pulled his 2004 Toyota Tacoma, (Yes – a Toyota Tacoma Truck) up to the base of the obstacle and never looked back. The view from inside the truck was all blue sky as the Toyota Tacoma was near vertical and easily climbed the wall. Behind the All-Pro Off-Road Tacoma was the legendary off road statesman – MasterCraft sponsored Walker Evans, who drove his gorgeous blue custom Jeep up the obstacle while smiling at all the onlookers.
Skyjacker’s Garret Sisson and BFGoodrich’s Dean Bulloch simply rolled up and over the top of the obstacle as if it wasn’t even there, as did MasterCraft’s All-Star Aaron Dusenbery in his single-seat moon buggy featuring the latest in advanced technology.
The MasterCraft show on these rocks was outstanding as the nation’s top drivers demonstrated the ultimate way to get around the rocks of Moab.
A talented group of off road desert racers in town for the festivities all joined their off-road racing friend, Robbie Pierce, and banged around the Moab rocks jockeying for position in the front of the pack. Utilizing radios to communicate between each other we heard more than once that several had been “black flagged” and told to move to the end of the longest line on the lead lap…hmmm, desert racers having way too much fun on the rocks of Moab. Rumor has it SCORE Class 1 Champ – John Marking took the finish line in his white Jeep Rubicon in front of Jeff Howe, Mark B, Jon Bundrant as well as the others who were all chasing the leader.
Have you really ever seen a gaggle of Jeep Rubicon’s positioning themselves on the Moab trails as if it was Sunday afternoon at Bristol Motor Speedway? No…well, maybe this was a cross between Bristol Motor Speedway and the Zoo Road at the SCORE San Felipe 250…but the truth is it was the red rock of Moab.
And making things most interesting was the MasterCraft Kingpin himself, who at the last obstacle of the day, decided he was going to show off his race truck/Jeep handling skills to a group of MasterCraft friends and family. Most of the professional rock crawlers took up positions on the last obstacle of the day to show off techniques and style on an 80 degree plus vertical wall that simply took the right approach and technique to conquer.
Interview with the MasterCraft girls & Robbie Pierce:
The MasterCraft Rob-i-con had all three MasterCraft ladies in the Rob-i-con Jeep as the very talented driver pushed the silver and red Jeep towards the top of the obstacle until the front end bounced ever so-slightly. The Jeep started to slide sideways on the rock face, but as any professional desert racer or rock crawler would do, Robbie simply shifted into reverse, as the Rob-i-con slid sideways heading for doom, and made a spectacular save. He never stopped smiling, but his passengers soon bailed from the Rob-i-con as he repositioned his rig on the wall for the final assault.
Walker Evans stood by as Robbie attacked the wall and climbed the face with ease putting the Rob-i-con on top of the Moab Rocks.
Interview with Tracy Jordan:
The 2006 MasterCraft Trail Ride ended an hour later as the entire crew made their way down the hill towards the shores of the Colorado River where family and friends of the most technologically advanced seat company in the off road world said their goodbyes.
MasterCraft Seats is not only the leader in the off road seat world, but they demonstrated here at the Easter Jeep Safari the talent of blending camaraderie between the nation’s top industry leaders in the ultimate relaxed atmosphere.
Many thanks to Robbie Pierce and the MasterCraft Staff for hosting us paparazzi along with all the friends and family of the Dirt Nation.
