Cattle graze quietly nearby while Nathan Hoerauf is busy tearing up their pasture, preparing it for the hundreds of four-wheelers that’ll be climbing, sliding and getting stuck in the March muck of the Mountain Mud Festival.
An extra month to prepare means some surprises and challenges for four-wheelers who’ll head up Berlin Road to the festival the first weekend of March. Derek Wodtli and Hoerauf started working on the festival site in December.
To get it ready, they dig holes and bogs into the pasture with a bulldozer. A drag strip must be scraped out.
They’ve had more time than they had last year. After receiving their two-year mass-gathering permit from Linn County last year, volunteers had less than a month to prepare the site and build a second road to it.
They’ve been able to take the time to add features they’ve wanted, Wodtli said, and make them more challenging.
With an earlier start, Wodtli and the South Santiam Four-Wheelers Association have added an obstacle course, featuring a variety of tough terrain, including small hills and pits.
“We’re probably going to time this too,” Wodtli said. “There won’t be any prizes awarded. It’ll just be bragging rights.”
Saturday, Wodtli and Hoerauf were busy working on the drag strip. They have already completed the obstacle course and a number of new bogs, expanding the overall size of usable area.
Wodtli hopes that will spread the traffic out and make more room for drivers at different attractions around the festival.
With a couple more days of work, the festival site should be ready to go, Wodtli said.
Wet weather so far is a good sign. Last year, with a dry winter, the Four-Wheelers Association had to bring water in on tankers.
“If it keeps raining like it has been, we won’t need to,” Wodtli said. “The ground’s saturated right now. It’s holding water really well.”
Most of the bogs the group has been digging have standing water in them, and the ground is soft enough in some, even Wodtli’s Dalmatian was sinking into the mud as he explored the festival site.
The bogs themselves should be more challenging as well, Wodtli said. Last year, a tanker would dump water. A few rigs would blast through the holes and blow out all the mud and leaving a dry hole for those who followed.
This year, they’re digging out the holes, then backfilling them and digging out ruts, a combination that should leave holes muddy all day.
The South Santiam Four Wheelers don’t receive any funds for putting the event on. They do it for fun.
“It’s all worth it,” Wodtli said. “I like watching people. Four-wheelers are a different breed, and I like doing stuff like that. As a club, we enjoy putting it on.”
The event has gone on regularly for some 30 years. It started in the Foster lake bed in January. Last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shut down the Foster Mud Flats, and the South Santiam Four-Wheelers started the Mountain Mud Festival.
Ray and Norma Johnson host the site on the property off Berlin Road.