12-30-04

Halter Motorsports Ranch would like to thank the Northern Montana communities for their support in 2004. Thousands of you attended our Western Pro-National motorcycle hill climbs that we hosted on our place just outside of Fort Benton. Our motorcycle hill climbs draw riders from 14 States and Canada (as far away as Massachusetts) to compete for national points and cash prizes. The future looks bright. Looking back our Memorial Day weekend (BIG TIME Hill climb) event was a lot of fun even though Mother Nature definitely made it a challenge for us. Four inches of rain in three weeks was a lot to deal with, yet our rider attendance was high and our spectator attendance was great. In 2004 we held our Rattle Snake Ridge national points hill climb on Labor Day weekend. The weather was more cooperative and the brand new hill made for an exciting show. A select few riders cleared the top so aggressively that they jumped 30 to 40 feet! Some of the riders actually jumped clear over our timing system. This really brought the crowd to their feet. On the other end of the spectrum, the little kids on their 50cc’s and 80cc’s in the trophy classes put on a great show. It was a great pleasure to prepare these young riders at the starting line for their ride. Their looks of determination were pretty impressive. Everyone we spoke to after our hill climbs reported that they had a great time. We’re very excited about the 2005 season.
We have big plans for improvements to our place. Our land will offer annual club membership access starting in January. Our goal is to create an organization that has family-oriented motorsports activities available to members. We want to build a member-friendly clubhouse. We are going to build a few tracks for motocross, pit bike racing, and young kids racing. We plan to trim a large section of our ridge to allow intermediate/beginner hill climbers to have a fun (and safe) hill to learn on. We are also making plans to build a nice cross country / hare scrambles track. Established camping areas will be available. If you are interested in being part of our motorcycle club check out our ad on this page. Our membership drive will begin in January 2005. Thank you again for your interest in motorcycles and we hope to see you all again soon at the Halter Motorsports Ranch. Visit us anytime at www.haltermotorsports.com.

9-26-04

THE 2004 BIG IRON SHOWDOWN

600 Feet of new hill with wild jumps and nasty ledges sums up the first annual "BIG IRON SHOWDOWN in Columbus Montana! Halter Motorsports hosted the first annual race set up just for BIG BIKES! It was a pretty neat format. The hill was set up so spectators could actually climb 200 feet up the west boundary to get a spectacular view of the climb. And the riders gave them a show! Rider attendance was awesome. 48 riders entered from all over the U.S. and Canada.

The hill had a slippery starting line but the traction was better between 60 and 120 feet (which was a good thing since the 40 foot jump started there! Most guys were jumping 40 to 50 feet but a select few jumped alot farther! Donny Beer measured in at around 62 feet but the intense speed and torque allowed his twin engined Husaburg to get away from him. Don hurt his back when he hit the ground. He is doing fine now and should heal up fine.

A few of the riders came up short on the jump but walked away without injury. The upper end of the 600 footer was a challenge with ledges and a rocky surface. Different riders with different riding styles made the hill look easy while others had problems. Most rides were in the 11 to 13 second range.

The first round left Dave Watson in the lead with an amazing time, but not un-beatable. Columbus local Dusty Beer came back in the second round to grab the win with a mid 10 second ride. Dave Watson ended up in second place with Billings Crazy Man Chucky Dubell in third.

The event was alot of fun and we look forward to next years SHOWDOWN!

In the near future we will have full results and photos posted on our website. ALSO Finish Line Films covered the event and will have a full bore video of the event Thanks for all of you who came and we hope you all had fun! Tell your friends and we’ll see you all next year!

John and Mindy Halter

9/7/04

Our First Annual RATTLE SNAKE RIDGE Hill Climb turned out really nice and everyone seemed to have a great time! The hills were a challenge on the Saturday qualifiers. The irrigated soil held up great and made for some fast runs. We actually saw some different guys coming out on top! That promoter (John Halter) was so distracted by all of the event details that he actually rode his CR500 to a first place finish in the 0-700 Qualifier! Must be a mental thing??! Best place/Ride EVER! LOOK OUT Dusty!! :D

Our event ran smoothly with our new wireless timing system. Our event staff did a great job again. Thanks guys and girls!! We all appreciate your help!!

Saturday evening held some awesome rides by the Pros (that were present) in the PRO SHOOT-OUT. Shannon Chamberlain came out on top this time with Don Beer in second and Pete Loomis in third. Then everyone hopped on the shuttle bus to Fort Benton for a great meal and beverages at the Club House Sports Bar and Grill! We all had the chance to view THE Spring BIG TIME Hill climb video on the big screen. It was alot of fun.

Sunday was an interesting day with the Brand New Hill. Very Steep, awesome traction, and plenty of room to get moving at the start! Just the way I like it! Our irrigating paid off on the hill with Some loose dirt BUT not too much!The TOP DOG for Sunday ended up being Pete Loomis. Awesome........ just Awesome. Ken Barbula won the $500 bounty for being the first rider to get a clean time in the 0-700 class. Tad Chenowith had the honor of being the first over in the 701-open class winning that $500 bounty! Those Wyoming guys are getting serious!

There was good and bad for my little brother Larry. He won the Hard Luck Trophy/$200 prize for his amazing "OVER THE HILL AND THEN SOME!" RIDE! I was standing right there when he rocketed half way to the moon over the hill. Sadly what goes up must come down and his shiny new bike came down hard! Maybe the $200 will get the frame straightened but I doubt it!

Thanks from the Halters for all of those who attended. We really like our qualifier style event and will keep with this format. I heard there were a few whiners who stayed home because of the way we run our show. Putting it as polite as possible, if you don't have enough confidence in your riding skills on Saturday to actually "earn" a spot in the main Sunday show than maybe it would be safer if you stayed home on your couch.... enuf said.

Thanks to all of you true competitors who come to our events!! It has been great and we are excited already about next time!!! See you then.

John and Mindy Halter

www.haltermotorsports.com

6/22/04

Hello from the Halters! It took a couple of weeks to get caught up (and cleaned up!) but I finally made it back to my computer! Now it's time to reflect. Our first bonified NAHA Points Hillclimb was pretty exciting! Brand new Saturday and Sunday Hills that offered a whole new kind of climbing challenge for our place. It was kind of a mixture of Eastern style hills and Western style hills. Lots of launch area to get moving, a jump that a guy didn't want to come up short on, a nasty cliff that would either land you perfectly on the upper trail or shoot you out of bounds to the west or throw you off of a cliff to the east, an upper part of the run that allowed lots of speed but did have enough of a ledge to make you decide on throttling back to roll over it or hold it open and sky through the lights.............400 feet.... all in about 10-14 seconds. I don't have the stats in front of me but the times were very fast and the difference between 10th place and 30th was around one second!

The nervous part of the whole event for us was the weather. Northern Montana was heading into it's 7th year of drought right up until one month before our event. We had made major changes to our place with alot of help from our friends to be able to irrigate and run the dry hills. Then the rains came. 3 to 4 inches in one week right before our event weekend! It made a major difference to our place. No dust and huge traction! The only problem was that the rain didn't look like it was going to stop. Well, it did, long enough to get our Saturday mostly done with a small rain delay in the afternoon during the Pro Shoot-out. Spectator attendance on Saturday was OK but it could have been better if the weather hadn't been so cloudy/rainy. We were heading into Saturday evening with an optimistic weather report for Sunday and about 6 hours of sleep total from the 2 previous nights. If some of you didn't think I was being friendly enough it was probably because I was so shot tired. Sorry. We do appreciate everyone who traveled to our event. After a solid 7 hours of sleep we woke up Sunday to an overcast morning with rain/water setting everywhere! It had rained another 3/4 inch and the event grounds were a mess.

Luckily our ground is mostly sandy clay. When the clouds parted and the sun came out (with a little wind) our place firmed up pretty fast. Our Sunday event started past schedule time but still ran smoothly. The spectators showed up in pretty good numbers and the riders seemed to be enjoying our new Sunday Hill. Our Trophy kids put on a great show along with the Old Timers and the Super Seniors. I had the pleasure of giving away $5,000 worth of Door prizes to the crowd on Sunday including 3 brand new Honda CRF 50's!!
A special thanks goes out to our local Honda dealers who worked with Mindy and I to make this happen. It was alot of fun.

The Open Exhibition Class was awesome and had the crowd on their feet. Lots of horsepower and lots of radical runs. I have been told by many of the spectators that the show was the best one they had seen! The day ended with Jeff Thomas earning our overall BIG TIME Champion award/Traveling Trophy.
Good Job, Jeff!!

There are many Thanks to be given and I will get to that very soon. I already saw some of the film footage of our event taken by the NAHA film crew. It looks awesome. The DVD for our event will be ready for sale in about 90 days.

I will be updating our website soon with results and photos so check it out when you get a minute.

We want to say Thanks Very Much to all of you riders who came to our event.
We hope you had fun and we hope you will be back next time.

More details when we get caught up.

Sincerely, John and Mindy Halter of the Halter Motorsports Ranch.

Thousands enjoy Big Time Hillclimb
By Tim Burmeister
The River Press, Fort Benton, MT - Wed., June 2, 2004

The Halter Motorsports Ranch near Loma hosted another fun and exciting hillclimb Saturday and Sunday, and more people than ever came out to see the thrills and spectacle of the 2004 Big Time Motorcycle Hillclimb. John and Mindy Halter of the Motorsports Ranch say that the unofficial spectator count was around 5,000 for the weekend, which is up from the numbers at the first two hillclimbing events at the ranch last summer.
This was the first N.A.H.A. nationally sanctioned points event at the ranch, and riders from 14 states and Canada came to compete for the $20,000 purse.
Some of the spectators won big, too. The big prizes given away to the crowd included three new Honda motorcycles. Multitudes of prizes provided by event sponsors were handed out.
One of the big stories of this hillclimb was the weather. With rain Friday night, and with rain clouds traveling through the area Saturday and Sunday, there were probably some people who were thinking about coming to the hillclimb but who decided to stay home.
“We’re happy that Montana people are tough,” John Halter says. “The weather looked a little iffy, but lots of people came out anyway. They weren’t afraid of a little mud on their shoes.”
The Halters emphasize that they love the moisture.
“Having grown up in this area, we understand that moisture leads to prosperity for the whole area,” John says.
They would love the moisture more if it was timed to come a while before and after a big hillclimb event. But actually, the rain did a pretty good job of timing itself and moving around the motorsports ranch, so that only a few sprinkles fell on hillclimb. Friday night’s rain worked quite well to prepare the ranch for the event. John explains that the hills have lots of sand in them so that after a rain, a few hours of sunlight and some wind firmed up the hills enough to make everything good to go.
John says that they chose and designed the hill for this year’s events so that many of the riders would be able to make it over the top. Still, Sunday’s hill that the top riders battled in the quest for the big prize money was a very challenging course. Near the bottom of the hill, the riders had to fly over a 14-foot jump. Then they roared up an intimidating cliff which they had to hit at the right angle in order to shoot on to the track without going over the cliff. One of the riders did go over the cliff.
Pro rider Dusty Beer, riding a 200-horsepower bike, made the jump and landed full throttle with such force that every spoke ripped out of his rear wheel.
West coat pro motorcycle hillclimbers generally like steep cliffs that require technical work, John Halter explains. East coast pro riders generally like groomed trails with big jumps. Sunday’s cliff had all of these elements. The championship ended up going to an East coast rider, Jeff Thomas of Indiana.
Although it’s exciting to see the radical maneuvers of the top riders, John Halter comments that it was also great to watch the enthusiastic young riders.
“One of the highlights of the weekend was lining up the kids for the trophy hill, seeing the looks on their faces when they were about to ride, and giving them a little encouragement,” John says.
A few of the young riders put in such a good ride that they brought the whole crowd to their feet, John says.
Twenty riders ages five through 12 from around the county and the region competed on the trophy hill. That’s twice as many young riders as last year.
“We’re very excited about our progress over the last year, and we’re looking forward to the next hill climb coming up on Labor Day weekend,” John says.

THOMAS, CIPALA ‘BIG TIME’ WINNERS
By: Bud Northrup
Fort Benton, Montana May 30, 2004

John and Mindy Halter hosted the ‘Big Time’ Hill Climb at their Halter Motor Sports Ranch near Fort Benton, Montana. The format was quite interesting. The 30 top NAHA pros were automatically entered in the Sunday pro races, with an additional 30 added from the Saturday qualifier climbs to provide 60 entrants in the final climbs. Different hills were run for the Qualifiers and the Finals. NAHA has 2 pro classes – a 700cc and 701cc and up class – and nearly anything goes as far as machinery goes – if it has 2 wheels, run it! There were twin engine machines, snowmobile engine powered machines, and a Harley with a 2500cc powerplant running nitro. And some with rear wheels 12 inches or more wide. Many bikes you’ll unfortunately never see at an AMA sanctioned hill climb!
The NAHA hills are always incredibly difficult – some yielding the top to only a precious few. And the clubs have mountains to work with, so can move their climbing hills for every event. It was my first NAHA experience and I was very impressed with the riders, the machines, the hills and especially the professionalism, friendliness and operations of the promoters – the Halters. They gave out $20,000 in prize money, and incredible drawing prizes – including THREE 50cc Hondas!
In addition to the Qualifying climbs, there was also an amateur climb on a third ‘trophy’ hill, and an Pro Open exhibition run on Saturday, and on Sunday, Youth and Senior (40+ and 50+) classes were run at halftime between the pro classes.
Legendary riders from the west, such as Dusty Beers, the Kimballs, Petersons, Whitlocks and others we normally only read about their exploits at such places as Billings and the Widowmaker were a real thrill to watch. But when the dust was settled, it was two Midwestern riders who walked away with the first place money. Wisconsin’s Todd Cipala took the 700cc Pro win on his KX500 with Indiana’s Jeff Thomas claiming second on his Yamaha 650 twin. Thomas then returned with a 800cc nitro burning Yamaha Twin to claim the win in the Open Pro class, plus the ‘Top Rider’ award.
On Saturday, AMA Pro Champion David Watson flexed his muscles by winning the 700cc Qualifier with a very good 10.662 second time on his first ride. Amateur Ernie Beckwith was his closest challenger with a good 10.785 second run for the second place cash. In the Open Class Qualifier, Matt Coleman took the first place cash with an excellent 10.516 second run in the second round, overtaking Todd Cipala who had carded a 10.568 second time on his beautiful Harley to take the first round lead.
Also, on Saturday, they ran an all-pro shootout. Hillclimbing legend Dusty Beer showed his skills well with an outstanding 10.017 second first round ride, with Robie Peterson a shade behind him on his big and bad Harley with a 10.106 second run. Both riders crashed on their second rides, but their first round efforts held up for the top two spots.
In the 700cc Main event on Sunday, Cipala found himself down in the pack somewhat after the first round riding, posting an ‘average’ 12.895 second time on his KX500. But in the second round, he flew over the top in 10.709 seconds to take the win. Jeff Thomas was also average on his first ride on his Yamaha twin, turning in a 12.964 second time, but in second round action, he blasted the nitro burning Yamaha over in 10.716 seconds, only 7/1,000’s off Cipala’s time, and the only other rider in the class to break into the 10’s.
In Open Main action, however, Thomas wasted no time at all, sailing his AMA Pro 800cc Yamaha twin over the top on his first ride in 10.438 seconds – then sat back to see if anyone could catch him. No one did. Robie Peterson came close on his big Harley, however, blasting over the top in 10.452 seconds – just 14/1,000’s off the Thomas fast time – GREAT RACING!.
It was, all in all, and incredible experience and I send my congratulations to the Halters for a job very well done. I’m looking forward to my next NAHA experience.

RESULTS – SATURDAY, May 29:
0-700CC QUALIFIER: 1.David Watson, 2.Ernie Beckwith, 3.Troy McDowell, 4.Dustin Quast, 5.Corey Erhardt.
701cc-OPEN Qualifier: 1.Matt Coleman, 2.Todd Cipala, 3.Kurt Koester, 4.Jerimi Stratton, 5.Brandon Whitlock.
Pro Shootout: 1.Dusty Beer, 2.Robbie Peterson, 3.Mel Kimbal, 4.Travis Whitlock, 5.Brian Helton.
RESULTS – SUNDAY, MAY 30:
SENIIOR (40+): 1.Dave Johnson, 2.Kevin Downs, 3.Rick Stauffer, 4.Kenny ‘Mad Dog’ Long, 5.LeRoy Ebeling.
SUPER SENIOR (50 +): 1. Lefty Frueh, 2.Brad Barner, 3.Victor Kim, 4.Jim Meyer.
0-700CC MAIN: 1. Todd Cipala, 2.Jeff Thomas, 3.Dusty Beer, 4.Eric Cherry, 5.Jason Smith.
701-OPEN MAIN: 1.Jeff Thomas, 2.Robbie Peterson, 3.Brian Helton, 4.Brian Osburn, 5.Travis Whitlock.
FAST TIME: JEFF THOMAS, 800CC YAMAHA TWIN, 10.438 SECONDS