Finally got the chance to take the XL600R out to some proper trails and riding in the Black Hills. I’ve had a string of old 80's Honda machines and every single time I’ve taken one of them out to the Black Hills it would break down, until now! The old bike performed flawlessly, honestly it felt like it ran better than it does at home.
There were some pretty gnarly trails at times, especially the one up the flag in the picture above, but I made it up, and down. Only dumped it once although there were a lot of close calls.
We got a heavy rain/hail storm at the end of day one which made the trails on day two wet, muddy, and very slippery at spots. Muddy puddles were the absolute worst because if I didn’t hit it just perfectly the rear tire would slide down rutts from the ATV’s and SxS’s and the next thing I knew the rear tire would be on the opposite side of the trail while the front wheel slid helplessly through the rest of the mud.
I eventually got tired of fighting the mud so about halfway through day two I switched over to the spare ATV we brought. Glad I did too because the trails we rode on day two were much more technical and rocky than day one and the quad made it easy to cover lots of ground.
Overall I had an awesome time on the bike and can’t wait to get out again.
Photo dump.
