Jared: A dead tree branch stuck in the throttle. The sled grabbed a handful of throttle, throws Rocky off the back, does a ghost ride side hill, pretty impressive side hill. Then, head-on into a tree at probably 70 miles an hour.
It was a little scary situation for me because I'm over, away from the side, and all of a sudden all I see is snow flying out of a tree so I take off, thinking something bad's happened. I run over there, thinking Rock's in a tree.
When I got there, I had no idea. I saw a really crazy side hill. I'm thinking, "Maybe he took a face full of snow and didn't see a tree and just T-boned it at full throttle."
I go flying over there, and all I see is sled piled in the tree. I see stickers plastered all over in the tree branches, so I'm just looking for bodies laying out the other side. I look around there, yell his name a few times, and there Rocky is, 100 yards back behind me in the trees, just giving me the hands in the air like, "I don't know what happened." For me, for a minute, it was seriously a scary moment because I didn't know what had happened or where Rock was for probably a few minutes anyway.
Rock: Jared, my son Wyatt, myself and Tyson Thomas, Justin Thomas, and Chris Thomas went back up there with a 2,500-foot spool of rope, a snatch block and a toboggan. It took a while to get it out--that's another story in its own. What Jared didn't tell you was he had a tether for the sled back at the shop. It's something we always add. But it wasn't on in time for this one.
Jared: After a day and a half, with a little extra help getting the thing drug out of the mountains, the next big challenge was deciding what to do with the sled. We decided that this was the opportunity to start over and rebuild the thing again, from the ground up.
It was all the way apart. What I did is just took my time and ordered all new parts and then I custom powdered coated everything, bulkhead, tunnel, steering hoop, spindles, every component that could be powder coated. I just wanted to carry as little snow around as I could because powder coating is a great way to shed snow and ice.
While I was in there, I added a custom water to aid cooler that Boondocker is now offering with their new turbo kits and custom cold air intake with SLP high flow air intake to go on the hood. Then, for some of my tuning and gauge displays, I added a Bully Dog GT 200 display.