• October 2005  •

An hour north of Green Bay, Wisconsin sits a motocross track that's running strong six years after some said it wouldn't last.

“The first big week of the year, Memorial Day, we'll probably get 3,000 spectators. It gets pretty hectic,” said Kelly LaCount, president of Pine Ridge track off of County C by Athelstane. “When we first opened this track up, people from the southern tracks thought this was so far north that we'd only be open two or three years. This is vacation land. The first big weekend of the year they all want to do something but it's too cold for a lot of things.”

Attendance dips as the year goes on and drops to a trickle once the school year starts, but the attached campground keeps the draw high through the summer and keeps LaCount busy each weekend, whether there's a race or not.

“We thought we'd do one or two races per year and just pay for the property taxes. From there it just grew,” he said.

The 1.1-mile track is on 117 acres of land next to Lost Lake, and a 4.5-mile hare scramble course cuts through much of it.

ATV Racer Eric DeNoble said it's one of the biggest tracks he's raced on and he keeps his eyes open for the braking bumps and lips.

“Those are the main things. The track gets a lot of ruts, but otherwise it's a fun track and is in good shape,” he said. “There's a big double back there. It's a step-on, step-off. Then you turn around and take a double X. I had bad luck there. I broke my arm and my collar bone there the last two years off of that.”

Brad Berger said the soil of this challenging track gets thrown in his face over the handlebars of his ATV, but it's no worse than other tracks.

“Sand gets whooped out. A lot of ruts get pounded. You get just covered in it and you can't see,” he said, and he's grateful for the tear-offs off his goggles.

The announcer for the Great Lakes Quad Series, Brad Berglund, called Pine Ridge, “One of the best ones we've been to. Real long, sandy. It gets a little rough, but it's real challenging. I talked to pretty much everybody in the pits and everybody likes it. I heard a lot of people say it's their favorite track so far this year. Some natural terrain. A lot of sand, good jumps. Challenging but wide and safe at the same time. They do a good job here.”

From the massive and tall concrete announcing booth, he did his best to call the shots but the racers disappear behind hills and often behind pine trees.

“It's tough to see but that makes it interesting,” he said, meaning that the leader can change just out of sight.

LaCount said cutting those trees means they offer free firewood to campers. “It keeps growing so we've got to keep thinning it out more and more.”

ATVs raced with dirt bikes originally and raced without them for the first time in September. But it's about 500 bike racers who dominate each race, he said.

“Our average here is about 500 to 600 riders.” It's grown each year and has gotten a boost from the creation of the Northern Cup Series, which is new to the region. “We started that ourselves. It's a series between us and three other tracks. That's getting stronger and stronger every year,” LaCount said. Next may be a national youth Hare Scramble event, which he said isn't currently offered anywhere.

The juniors who ride there currently practice behind the pits and racers' campers on the pee wee practice track.

“Instead of having them run around the pit area we keep them down there,” he said, “It works out nice.”

Once upon a time LaCount and his cousins were all pee wees tooling around the trails on their dad's land. Much of the trail today was blazed decades ago.

“We would have died to have a track like this when we were kids,” he said. “Anywhere there was a ridge we brushed it out. “Whatever kind of air we could get we'd get off on it.” Some of those paths were deer trails, he said, “There were many times that I almost ran into a deer.”

It was when nephew Craig Wallace drove on those paths at age 12 that his family started to seriously think about expanding the track.

”My nephew, my youngest one, wanted to start racing. We kind of built the track out here just for him to race on. The more people that knew the track was here, they started showing up more and more. A buddy of mine used to own a track in Kali, Florida. He's like ‘Let's push this a little bit wider and lets' start holding some races here.'”

The plan for a race or two each year fell away when the track's popularity grew, and with it the commitment from the family. “It takes about 75 people to run this here,” LaCount said.

That's not just the races, but the camping that takes up just as much space and costs $10 per car.

“They come up here, there're places to go, do things, they make a weekend out of it,” he said. Campfires and recycling canisters dot the clearings in the pines they cleared out just for campers. “Eventually we'll have to have bathrooms and showers here. We just put fresh water lines in for camping,” he said.

Other improvements will be on the track, starting with a thicker water feed to keep the dirt heavy rather than dusty. A nearby spring-fed pond feeds the 2.5 inch hoses that aren't quite adequate.

A thick foam wall separates two parallel straight-aways on the course and stand firmly as examples of investments paying off. “We used to put hay in there, but there was so much hay you had to do something with it,” he said, so they went with foam. “That worked out really great. It was $2,100 but it was well worth spending.”

Next year tunnels under two jumps on the north end of the track will help spectators get to currently unreachable seats. The bleachers are waiting for them and shipping containers make the tunnels strong and safe.

“It's core steel so it won't rot,” LaCount said. “I'll be pouring concrete on the side of these.”

Right now spectators line up along the fences and rest on the grass or blankets under the shades of the many pines at this track in Wisconsin's northwoods.

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