Didn't even know it was happening. Wish I had though... Would have made an effort to attend had I known.
My sister has a house on the "old" Widowmaker hill. Darn shame that the old hill is all covered up in houses now. From my sisters front porch, you can still just barely make out some of the old lines, especially from the Expert run, if you know just where to look. Lots of good memories from the Widowmaker. My Dad used to run it way back, before I was even born. I think it was at the "old" Holiday gun club back then. He started taking me to the Widowmaker there in Draper every year when I was pretty young. We'd ride out to it on one of his old Triumph's. I remember one year, we came walking back to where Dad's bike was parked and there were five or six guys from an out of state M.C. (Mongols) beating the crap out of some dude. Turns out, the guy had walked up to my Dad's bike (old, collectible and very, very cherry) and started touching it, and these guys we didn't even know took offense and beat the bejeezus out of him for it.
Also remember watching Jim True make the very first climb all the way up on that hill. As the years passed and the lines got worn in, more and more guys started making it over, to where the winner was the one who made it over the fastest. But for a long time, NOBODY made it up, winner was whoever made it the furthest. Every run ended in a wreck. Always cheered louder for the guys who crashed early, but rode down, than the guys who made it a long way up but walked it down (boo!). Spectators used to get in the way, too, sittting on the hill inside the boundaries. Used to get a kitty going in the pits, for whoever hit the first spectator. At least one year, there was more money to be made by running over a spectator inside the lines than you could make by winning!
Another year that I was there with my Dad, I witnessed a murder there - bikers were kicking the crap out of some guy, he jumped in his Cougar and tried to run them all over, got one of them... Never forget watching that guy on his hands and knees as the rear diff hit him...
When I got old enough, my friends and I started making it an annual event. Used to take a couple kegs up there and have a good old time. Somebody always got beat up, somebody always went to jail, but it was always fun. The last year it was held on that hill, a few of my buddies got a bit too tipsy and tried going up the hill in their rigs and rolled them, and all went to jail. Lots of bad press in the papers on that one, sometimes wonder if that didn't have something to do with the event never being held there again... Ah... I do miss the Widowmaker. The Good Old Days!
- DAA