
Traveling Colorado's Gunnison National Forest Ridgeline in Honda's Ridgeline
Testing our bikes and friendship to the limits deep in the Rockies at Crested Butte, Colorado.
By Alex Steele
Photography by the author
A lot of people have seen the TV commercials, print and cyber ads plugging Honda's Ridgeline pickup. You know, four-wheeling across a rugged landscape, two red & white dirt bikes riding shotgun. Anyway--cool picture--but let's fill in the blanks.
Production was on schedule with our yearly trip off-road in Colorado. So we got hold of a 2006 Ridgeline, American Honda's first and only pickup. Next, keeping with genetic protocol, was Honda Motorcycle Division's all-new four-stroke off-road bike, the 2005 CRF450X. Home base was deep in the Rockies at Crested Butte, Colorado. Circuits consist of ATV and single-track motororized trails crossing the Gunnison National Forest.
The Ridgeline crewcab concept aims at the passenger accommodations of an SUV, with the cargo capacity of a pickup, while still leaving plenty of room to close the garage door. A key feature is the trunk/spare tire compartment fixed underneath a steel-reinforced composite bed. It supplies 8.5 cubic feet of lockable storage area, and being both watertight and drainable, doubles as a built-in cooler.
Honda's 4x4 pickup fits the midsize truck segment. However, in place of a truck-standard body-on-frame, they've integrated a closed box ladder frame with unibody construction--a beefed-up version of the Odyssey minivan platform.
A five-speed automatic transaxle, bolted to a single-speed AWD transfer case, and driven by a transverse-mounted 3.5-liter 255 horsepower V-6, all come standard.
Our test-vehicle was the Ridgeline RTL S/R, a high-end trim package with leather seating and a majority of the luxury amenities, priced at $32,640 with the moonroof and XM Satellite Radio, minus the Satellite-Linked Navigation System (base RT models start at $27,700).
We put the CRF250X through its paces last year in the Routt National Forest. Since then, we've been anxious to test-ride big brother CRF450X. The 250X's lightweight chassis demonstrated its competence over some brutal terrain. But a bit more forceful dig from the "thumper" engine would've been icing on the cake. Conversely, there were questions regarding the 450X's 255 pound dry-weight--22 pounds heavier than the 250X--overshadowing its advantage in power with somewhat less nimble handling.
Two of us headed for the mountains with the Ridgeline, westbound out of Denver (elevation: 5,278 ft.). The rest of the crew hauled their bikes in from the West Coast.
...
>>next page