Track time can be a little difficult to come by for ATV and UTV riders, so it’s great to hear that Southern California’s Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park has announced completion of a dedicated ATV, Side-by-Side and Trophy Cart track. The track will open on Saturday morning, Oct. 6 at 9:00 am.

“With a layout filled with obstacles, the track was designed to challenge riders of all skill levels,” Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park says in a release.

As part of its OHV Access Initiative, Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A., employees volunteered to help restore one of the San Bernardino National Forest’s most popular multi-use off-highway vehicle (OHV) staging areas this past weekend.

Eighty volunteers, comprised of Yamaha employees and their family and friends, along with members of the San Bernardino National Forest Association (SBNFA), contributed approximately 240 hours of volunteer service to maintain and improve the Cactus Flats staging area.

The San Bernardino National Forest sees approximately 2.4 million visitors each year, and Cactus Flats is a popular spot for OHV enthusiasts providing access to some of the best trails in Southern California. Thousands of visitors, including OHV enthusiasts, hikers and mountain bikers among others, enjoy the staging area and surrounding trails each year.

“Yamaha is dedicated to the OHV community and has contributed thousands of volunteer hours and more than $2 million since 2008 to the mission of supporting safe, responsible riding and open, sustainable riding areas,” says Mike Martinez, general manager of Yamaha’s ATV/SxS operations and an SBNFA board member who volunteered alongside his son over the weekend. “Yamaha employees are passionate about their volunteer efforts here in Southern California. We understand that these OHV areas are important to our customers and our business, and it means a lot to us personally to help keep these areas in good shape for current and future generations.”

California’s Off-Highway Vehicle Trust Fund is in danger of losing up to $31 million. California’s Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 3 on Resources and Transportation voted to raid the fund and transfer it to non-OHV related programs.

According to the Blue Ribbon Coalition, the OHV funds are slated to go to the Sustainable Parks Proposal, which is being championed by the California Parks Foundation, California State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) and other “anti-OHV organizations.”

Don Amador, Western Representative of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, tells ATV.com the OHV Program was enacted into law in the early 1970s as a way to pay for OHV management on local, state, and federal lands. Before the law was enacted, riders got a state tax refund based on fuel use off-pavement. The law took that tax refund and created the OHV Trust Fund as a way to support sustainable OHV recreation into the future. About 10 percent of the OHV Trust Fund comes from OHV registration (e.g. green sticker/red sticker) and the rest comes from an off-road fuel taxes (paid while users recreate off-pavement) calculated formula based on user visitor days on public lands.

If you are hoping to one day make a career out of the ATV and off-road industry (or just get more involved with your local club), the National Off-Highway Vehicle Conservation Council (NOHVCC) is currently taking applications for the Spring OHV Recreation Management Course at Marshall University.

The spring semester OHV Recreation Management courses are PLS 451/551: Planning and Design of OHV Parks; and PLS 453/553: Operation and Management of OHV Trails Systems. The information in these courses can be invaluable for both agency personnel as well as the enthusiasts. The winner of the scholarship will be able to choose one of the two offered courses for this spring’s semester.

The scholarship is being administered by the National Off-Highway Vehicle Conservation Council. The applications are due in the NOHVCC office on Dec. 23, 2011. NOHVCC will review the applications and choose a winner in the shortest amount of time possible. Spring courses begin Jan. 9, 2011.

ATV and UTV enthusiasts are no doubt used to fighting for their right to ride and now they face two significant salvos – a potential end of the dedicated funding for recreational trails and a proposal that could block riding on public land in nine states.

We’ll look at the trail funding first. According to the American Motorcyclist Association, the U.S. Senate will vote on a bill that would end the dedicated funding for the Recreational Trails Program (RTP), which is considered to be one of the most important and beneficial laws for off-highway vehicle (OHV) riders ever passed by Congress.

The RTP, which provides money to states to develop and maintain trails, would lose dedicated funding under provisions in a transportation funding authorization bill — S. 1813, “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century” (MAP-21) — which was approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by an 18-0 vote on Nov. 9. It’s unknown when the full Senate will vote on the measure.

Wayne Allard, AMA vice president for government relations, was shocked by the committee vote and noted that abolishing the RTP dedicated funding would effectively create a tax increase on OHV riders because the RTP funds would no longer be designated for a program that benefits motorized trail users.

“More than 160 Yamaha GRANTs have been awarded since the Initiative’s inception in 2008, but we want to do more,” says Steve Nessl, Yamaha ATV and SxS marketing manager. “The Yamaha OHV Access Initiative has grown into the number one industry resource for the OHV community in its support of riding areas across the country, and we encourage riders and public land managers to work together to identify and submit projects for consideration of a GRANT.”

Our team is regularly on the road, riding ATVs and UTVs across North America. Read about your next off-road adventure right here.

Every year around the beginning of spring in a sleepy little Texas town, a few guys come together for a week of mud racing, crawfish eatin’, and good times. Keep in mind that this is Texas, so a few means more like 10,000 people visiting the mudding paradise known as Mud Creek Off-Road Park in Jacksonville, Tex. for the 2010 High Lifter Mud Nationals.

Attendance numbers are a conservative estimate – it has been sais that as many as 15,000 could walk through the gate by week’s end. These guys are not your normal Utility mud riders, though. More like fierce competitors looking to become king of the Pit in an all-out brawl to be the best of the best in ATV mud racing. Starting on Wednesday evening the crowd begins to grow. By Saturday the park is like downtown New York at rush hour as it is filled with the sounds of four stroke thumpers roaring into the wooded acres of Mud Creek. This will continue into the night as well with lights and faint sounds of a cheering crowd echoing through the trees.

Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A., employees volunteered for two important projects last month to support the San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California and its off-highway vehicle (OHV) trails. Over two days, approximately 100 volunteers including Yamaha employees and family members, planted 1,200 trees and cleaned up miles of ATV and Side-by-Side OHV trails.

On Saturday, April 25, a group of Yamaha employees along with staff from the non-profit, volunteer-based San Bernardino National Forest Association (SBNFA) scouted and worked on miles of trails that Yamaha has sponsored and adopted as part of the company’s OHV Access Initiative. Over years, Yamaha and the SBNFA have formed a strong partnership focused around the SBNFA’s own OHV program.

The San Bernardino National Forest is within driving distance to more than 20 million people in Southern California, contains the highest concentration of threatened and endangered species in the continental United States, and is the most visited national forest in the country. The SBNFA manages a number of educational, recreation and conservation programs complimenting the mission of its U.S. Forest Service partners, including its OHV program which is a model for national forests across the country.

It’s not very often that you get the chance to explore an old underground mine, let alone while riding an ATV. But that’s exactly what you can expect if you visit the Mines & Meadows ATV/RV Resort in western Pennsylvania.

Mines and Meadows offers a lot more than just a tour through an old limestone mine, but that’s certainly the most unique feature of the park so that’s where we’ll start.

As you roll through the wooden-beam enforced mine entrance your headlights better be on because you won’t be seeing any natural light again until you come out. You may think you’ve been in the dark before, but you’ve probably never experienced such a complete and total lack of light as we encountered here. It’s not like your eyes can adjust to the light – this is as dark as dark gets – there’s no light to adjust to! As Mines & Meadows owner Robert J. Svihra likes to say, “You can’t even see what you’re thinking.” Fortunately for us, the Kawasaki Brute Force ATVs we were riding provided ample light to show us the way.

Superstition Mountains. Lost Dutchman mine. Gold Canyon. Queen Valley. Ninety degrees, warm, no snow. These are words and thoughts that brought a snowbound Minnesotan to the Arizona desert for an ATV adventure in early spring. That and the fact that longtime friend and fellow Minnesotan Larry Koch had been bugging him for the past few years to ‘come on down’ and go ATVing with him and his ‘snowbird’ buddies.

Larry and a growing number of Midwestern winter refugees swap the ice and cold for the sun and warmth of the Arizona desert just southeast of Phoenix. Recent demographic studies of those suburbs and towns east of Phoenix reveal that Larry and the area’s other 120,000 winter residents spend more than $350 million during their winter-only stay.

While the common belief is that this arid state consists primarily of senior citizens, the reality according to the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau is that only 12.8 percent of Arizona’s 6.1 million residents are 65 or older. Of course, nearly half (47.6 percent) of the state’s retirement age residents relocated from other states after having reached 55 years of age.

For all intents and purposes, I am an ATV rookie.

Fortunately for me, I was hired because of my journalism background and online production experience. If the powers that be had been looking for an experienced ATV rider, I wouldn’t be writing this article.

However, since I do, in fact, work for ATV.com, I thought it would do me some good to spend some time on the trails.

After getting in touch with Mike Carr, a Polaris district sales manager in northern California, he arranged a day of riding.

I met Carr at his house just outside of Sacramento. We hopped in his truck and headed north upstate about 85 miles and met up with the rest of our party in Chico. After gassing up the vehicles, we drove into the hills about 35 miles northeast of Chico to our starting point in a place called Butte Meadows.

Carr provided a 2008 Polaris Ranger RZR, while Gray Glende, who runs a Polaris dealership in Chico, brought a 2008 Ranger XP and a brand new Sportsman 800 EFI HO. We were also joined by Darren Ritchey, who brought a 2007 Polaris Outlaw and some of Glende’s staff and friends from Chico, who were riding motocross bikes.

On this November morning, there was still a little chill in the mountain air, but the temperature would climb to a comfortable level in short order.

I started the day on the Sportsman 800 and we headed out into the woods on some fire trails. I was a little tentative at first, but I managed to squeeze the throttle enough to reach about 45 miles an hour. This is far below the Sportsman’s capabilities, but I figured I should at least get comfortable before going all out.

About 15 minutes into the ride and before hitting the rough trails, we stopped and did a head count. It seems we were short two riders.

Glende assumed they had taken a wrong turn, but after waiting for a while with no sign of them, Carr headed back in the RZR to see what he could find. He returned a few minutes later, followed by Peter Schmitz on a bike and Ritchey, who seemed to be driving his Outlaw with one hand.

Turns out Ritchey switched off his trusty Outlaw and took a turn on Schmitz’s motocross bike. Apparently it’s difficult to make that particular transition and Ritchey crashed the bike after hitting a rock on the fire trail. His hand now resembled an inflated rubber glove and his arm was broken.

Ritchey was offered a ride back on the Ranger XP, but he said he didn’t want to ruin everybody’s day so he hopped back on the Outlaw with one hand on the throttle and the other in a makeshift sling made out of a fleece jacket and drove back. Schmitz followed on his now damaged bike to help him load up the truck and suddenly our party of eight was now down to six.