2008 High Lifter ATV Mud Nationals

Story and photos by Brent Deen

Since 2003, High Lifter has promoted the largest mudding ATV event in the world. It’s appropriately held in the great state of Texas, Mud Creek Off Road Park in Jacksonville, Texas to be exact. As much as I am appreciative that High Lifter chooses to offer such a thing, I’m also having mixed emotions over the event as a whole. First, I need to state that my full time job interfered with the date of the event so I only got to go on Saturday in time to ride around and see the Akraix Free Style show. But, I did get a lot of information from the little time I was there.

I arrived at the park around 2:30 PM on Saturday. We finally found a parking spot and got settled in. I was aware that the Akraix Quad Freestyle Show started at 5:00 so we hustled over to make sure we had a good spot to witness what some of the best freestyle ATV motocross guys on the planet can do in mid air.

While riding over to the area I started to realize what kind of guest were attending the event. I have dealt a little with the mud competitors in that past. I know some of the Gorilla Axle guys and have hung out with them a little. They are your typical respectful ATV enthusiasts, but not this crowd. If you asked many of the guest here what race are you, they would say “Redneck”. They are proud of the term and display it with pride; rebel flags, beer guts, mullets, Redneck ingenuity — the whole nine yards. I have never seen so many signs saying “Let Me See Your Boobs,” in my life. But I will get back to that in a minute.

We found some spots at the freestyle show and settled in. I went and talked to some of the Akraix boys and got to go up on the large dirt landing in order to get some shots of the huge crowd that continued to gather. There were easily a thousand people crowded around and they were stoked to be there. The constant “Yee haws” and the “Woo-hoos” reminded of just how excited they were. The Akraix boys put on an incredible show on their new Can-Am DS450 ATVs. They were doing mind-boggling stunts over a huge 110 foot gap!

This is where my mixed emotions come in to play. The week earlier a friend had told me that they were not allowing alcohol at the park this year. But I guess the 17,000 people there did not get the memo. I realized there was a serious issue when a group of people sitting in front of us broke out a gallon jug of Patron and started taking shots while they tooled around helmet less on their quads.

Unfortunately shorts, flip flops and ball caps were the choice attire. On the way to the park I stopped at a gas station and saw a newspaper, on the front was an article saying, “Man Dies at Mud Nationals,” it set the tone for the day. They said there was no alcohol involved in his death, but helmets where not required. Alcohol, ATVs, rowdy people, no helmets – it’s now wonder why our parks get shut down. Don’t get me wrong, High Lifter put on a wonderful event. There was a lot of passion and heart that went into it. It just sucks to know that people just don’t care about that. They’re there to disrespect the sport and put the whole thing in jeopardy.

We went out on the trails to get some quality riding in and enjoy the day, after all I thought that’s what the event was all about. That did not work to well, there was areas with 3-hour waits just to continue down the trail. The extremely packed East Texas wooded trails were more like rush hour in LA.

This Arctic Cat had 49” Interco truck tires on it. WOW!I did get to see some real mudding though. The park offered plenty of Louisiana swamp-like mud. There where areas that looked like a GNCC course submerged in water. The power lines where amazing, it looked like a beach on the ocean. There were about 3,000 people lined up along the banks. But, all this had my emotions mixed again. While watching the rednecks frolic in the mud I came across the same issues as earlier. Beer, beer cans, beer bottles, I don’t mind people drinking responsibly, but the entire area including the woods were completely littered with empty beer cans and bottles. With never-ending lines of ATVs and UTVs in all different directions and beer containers literally everywhere, it was total pandemonium.

The concept of the event was awesome. It’s great to see ATV enthusiast uniting in an effort to enjoy their sport together, but I certainly wont be a part of this type of thing again unless more organization is put forth. Trails need to be broken up into loops and arrowed so riders are going in the same direction. Helmets need to be mandatory. I actually saw way more people not wearing helmets than wearing them. And most of all those that get drunk and ride need to be removed from the property altogether.

The Akraix Freestyle team put on a great show. I know that this is not the only event that this happens at. I know that nobody wants to hurt others, but we need to try to make a difference. Our sport and people lives are at stake unless we make some changes. For crying out load at least wear your helmet. In the few short hours I was there I saw at least ten people hauled away on stretchers. I don’t want to ruin the fun, but I don’t want to pretend this is normal at an ATV event either. I want to protect others and make them aware of what’s going on here. If you’re interested in going to events like the Mud Nationals, don’t drink and ride, don’t liter, anticipate problems before they happen, watch out for other riders, and by all means don’t take your kids.

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