Sean C. Morgan
The weather couldn’t have been much better Saturday, March 1, for going crazy in the mud.
“It’s thick,” said Steve Montpass of Sutherlin. “I’m having a blast. “It’s nastier this year. It’s the sloppiest it’s ever been.”
The eight-year veteran of the Mud Fest and its predecessor, the Mountain Mud Festival, was working on his 1949 Willys pickup after breaking his shocks on a jump, but it didn’t take him too long to get it back out into the soup.
The cab and a little bit of the frame are original, he said. Under the hood, it’s got a Chevy 406.
“It seems unstoppable,” said Montpass, who won the 2011 Top Truck Challenge in California with the rig.
This was Dustin Whittler’s first year at the event, and it left an impression.
“I definitely know I’m coming back next year,” he said as volunteers washed mud off his four-wheeler.
Even the little ones had a good time throwing mud around. Jaxxon Smith, 3, was busy racing a toy four-wheel drive along the drag strip.
They were all attending the annual Mud Fest hosted by the Santiam Four-Wheel Drive Association.
The sold-out event provided fun four-wheeling in the mud on pasture property just west of Holley off Highway 228.
About 40 volunteers run the festival. Among them were about 24 members of the association. About 1,500 attended.
Drivers, who streamed in from all points on the compass, started lining up between 5 and 6 a.m. to get into the event, which officially started at 9 a.m.
Volunteer Nancy Frick said festival officials were able to get the line cleared quickly without a hitch.
The event was good, she said. “It’s probably the best because of the rain, but it’s always swampy.
“I think every year it gets better because people realize what it’s about – just fun and mud and sometimes you have to wait.”
The event has been held annually since the late 1960s, when it started informally on the bed of Foster Lake during winter pool, which left a muddy bench that held 7,500 visitors at its peak in the 1990s. After several years at a site off Berlin Road, the association moved the event to Holley.