Vintage US 90 Footage on YouTube

[coolpool]

I’ve never seen this shared before, has anyone on here seen it before?
Starts off with black and white photos then goes to video. https://youtu.be/S1oH9DkGjcQ

[coolpool]

FYI, the video portion starts about 3 minutes in.

[coolpool]

What did any watchers think, pretty extreme conditions for those little trikes.

[ATC King]

They're made for those conditions. I wouldn't call it extreme.

Now, make it a 250, increase the machine weight a couple hundred extra pounds, and then it becomes extreme in those conditions.

That looked like a fun trip. Expensive, but fun. It's probably illegal to ride where they did now.

[knappyfeet]

What did any watchers think, pretty extreme conditions for those little trikes.

I thought it was awsome. Right up there with the Tears for Fears video & the 60 minutes episode....I'm sure there's more out there.

I have to disagree with King...it was pretty extreme. I'm sure Honda thought they would get some hard use but banging hard up and down those rocks and upside down across a river & being pulled and lowered down hills.....I'm surprised they weren't patching up tires every 10 minutes.

He is right though......it's probably a felony if you did that now

[ATC King]

I guess that's from a Honda brochure. It's in the specification section of this site.

All I seen was true off-road riding. Nothing all that crazy. I'd venture to guess most people nowadays have never actually been off-roading, simply because it's illegal in most public places now. The roughest and nastiest of trails is still a trail, the rider has some type of line to follow.

I didn't see anything that many people wouldn't have done. Walking a trike across a swollen river is something I've done several times, even needing to use two people on each one because the water was over waist deep and flowing pretty fast. That was normal riding for us growing up. Swamps and sloughs were a constant obstacle too. I've turned over in deep water quite a few times but always righted it quickly enough to avoid swamping the engine.

I knew it was going over when they had just one line on it, up high (I think) pulling it across the water, but their options were probably limited so they just went with it. Not the end of the world and they probably had extra oil, enough for a change or two. I've been in similar situations.

Those rocks are pretty normal riding in a lot of places. Slow and rough, not really all that fun, and it looks like they got tired of it at one point and started to shove them to the top of a hill to get to what looked like had a utility right-of-way at the top, by the look of the poles up there.

We had old gravel pits that we'd ride in. If you didn't make it to the top of one of the big hills it could be difficult to dismount without the trike tumbling away. That was our fun riding, close to home. We'd spend hours just in the gravel pits. There's a lot of gravel and rock mining around here with maybe four currently operational within the county. Can't play in those.

Honda made the original, the US90, small and compact, even advertised it fitting into cars. It's pretty easy to will a machine like that just about anywhere. Even a dirt bike is more cumbersome if trying to manhandle it like they were doing with the trikes. Auto clutch, three wheels, floats, just those three things alone make it easier to reach remote areas. A sub 200lb dirt bike would be hard to come by in that era and those fall over if not held up when stopped. Terrible when loaded for self-supported trips, having to find a place to lean it against or level enough ground to use the side stand.

The ropes? They didn't exactly have winches, so that's what they brought with them, fully intending to use. It looked like they had some gear too, pulleys, blocks, and whatnot. That little trike isn't any heavier than an adult male, so if they couldn't manage to wrestle one of the trikes around they would have been screwed if they needed to perform a human rescue. The gear they had could cover several functions. In the trunk of my 200ES is a rope, but I hope I never have to drag nearly 400lb machine up anything by myself. Yes, it's possible to do, but not fun. I need to go look, it's been a while, but I had some old dynamic climbing rope in there.

Honda designed these things to go about anywhere, to fill a void in the market, and a machine that was equally good for play as it was work.

The riders weren't jumping as high a rooftops and nearing triple digit speeds, the type of riding with a high risk of instant death. Clearly there were some hazards, but completely manageable by prepared riders. I think plunking along some of that terrain on those little trikes would be safer than trying to walk it. Those rock gardens look like ankle breakers, with possible broken wrists and head injuries.

I don't want to lessen anything about the video or their experience because would be a really nice memory to have. I'm also not trying to argue with anyone. Many of my riding experiences are similar to what's in the video, and I see it as a grand adventure, nothing out of the ordinary for many people back then, before widespread use of video games, social media, safe spaces, microaggressions, and many of the modern things that have people afraid of their own shadow now.

[coolpool]

From what I understand, the canol trail is still open for adventures of all sorts if you have the will and the ability to do it…. Of course some cash because it’s not exactly in an accessible area. Any wrecks where they were would have required a helicopter evacuation. There’s some pretty good YouTube videos on the construction of the Canol trail built in conjunction with the Alcan highway for wartime purposes.

[ATC King]

That's cool if the trail is still open to ATVs.

I figured by now the government or some billionaires bought the land, or at least enough of it to shut the trail down.