The annual pilgrimage to Cabo San Lucas from the Mexican border on dirt bikes is poised to launch at 1pm Thursday the 22nd of April live on your computer!!

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For the 5th year, the Monster Energy Rip to the Tip presented by Lucas Oil takes on the Baja with 29 riders looking to try and attain the ultimate goal of the “Full Pull.” The Full Pull requires riders to achieve every mile of the plotted trail, as led by Rip founder Cameron Steele, who is a second generation Baja racer and winner of the Baja 1000. Steele and Larry Badgwell, with Steele’s Desert Assassins race team, host the event and lay out terrain and challenges as vast as the Baja herself. From sand washes, beaches, mountains and cactus filled single track, the bikes and their riders will have to battle all of the elements to ride into Cabo San Lucas and realize their goal of “ripping” to Lands End.

“The trip forms a brotherhood and even though there was no set up guidelines, the Full Pull just became an animal in itself when only 5 of the original 12 riders conquered every mile when we launched the first Rip to the Tip in 2006,” said Steele, who missed the Full Pull Year One with a Day One bike failure.

For the 2010 trip, riders will face 8 grueling days in projected temperatures and conditions, ranging from 35 degrees and snow Day One, to potential 100+ degree days in the middle of the Baja Peninsula later in the trip. Riders will start some days waking up at 4am, getting on the bikes before sunrise and then finish other days as late as 2am. Sleep deprivation and the constant grind over 8 days can really take its toll on the group.

“What some people don’t realize is that we ride some trails that are expert single track, like last year’s ‘Bill Nichols Rock Trail,’ where pro level athletes gave in to the heat and the battle,” commented Badgwell. He continued, “in 2010, we have a day that is 265 miles, but includes some trails just pioneered by Baja Nomad Jesse Beck less than two months ago.

In 2009, 9 of 24 riders achieved the Full Pull with some succumbing to heat exhaustion, others to mechanical woes and some to the outright mental test this trip takes, where many riders simply just don’t know where they are. Riders help each other, but the strain of riding and maintaining your motorcycle over 8 days and a projected 1408 riding miles makes it tough for even the seasoned veteran.

This year the Rip features a wide variety of riders from Factory Honda Johnny Campbell racing team rider “OX”, who recently won the last Baja race overall on dirt bikes at one end of the spectrum, to Buggy Racing Champion, Chuck Cheek, who has only been to Baja one time for a lobster dinner 40 miles south of the border at the other.
For 2010, you can follow all the action live at http://www.dirtnewz.com/events-10/riptothetip/index.shtml
See if you can pick the riders that will achieve every mile and earn the Full Pull. Coverage will continue through the awards banquet where 6 awards are given out including, the most coveted “Brit Adude Excellence in Baja” award.