No, I’m not referring to the big cottonwood that crosses 9 Mile Creek in the MN River Bottoms that I wrote about back in September.
Rather, there’s a downed tree just a few feet from it on the east bank that makes for a much more difficult skinny. Wall of Death competition winner Heath Weisbrod alerted me to it last week saying that he’d cleaned it, so I tried it on Sunday morning.
As you’ll see in the video below, my first attempts went nowhere. So I thought the problem might be that the bark on top was crumbling so I pulled it off. Look closely at the photo of the log. Unfortunately, I made problem worse (again), as it exposed some moist spots that were underneath the bark. I tried it anyway and landed flat on my back. I told Heath about my misadventure and said that John Gaddo’s rule is that you have to clean an obstacle three times before you can ‘claim’ it and optionally name it. He wrote:
I cleared it 3 times totally clean. Once at night Thursday and twice more on Sunday. 3 and done! "Sqrl Log." I have witnesses both days. I was there until just before 11:00am Sunday.
I even got it one more time Thursday night (my first attempt) but reached out to the tree for stall then finished. So I’m not counting it.
Why ‘Sqrl Log’ for the name? Heath’s username in the MORC forum is RedSquirrel.
Here’s my 19 seconds of fail:
httpv://vimeo.com/79122204