WIDOW TALES OF THE MAKER

For two-plus decades, the Widowmaker Hillclimb in Draper, Utah, was ground zero for the movement. Utah-based event winners Mel Kimball Jr. and Sr. help tell the tale.

BY MITCH BOEHM

PHOTOS BY TRENT NELSON AND THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

scene at Point of the Mountain was different indeed: Waves crashing onto the terraced shore of what was then Lake Bonneville, a huge, inland lake that, at its peak, covered much of Utah and parts of Nevada and Idaho; a massive glacier forging nearby Little Cottonwood Canyon; and perhaps wooly mammoths or saber-toothed cats foraging or hunting nearby. The Point of the Mountain split is one of the most spectacular shoreline features in the Bonneville basin, and today you can easily see the remnants of those crashing waves along the bottom of the hillside that hosted the Widowmaker.

From my East bench home along the Wasatch front I can actually see that particular Draper hillside, and every time I look that direction from my backyard deck I recall that On Any

Sunday segment on Widowmaker, right along with Malcolm Smith’s recollections of the event as he and I worked on the OAS chapter for his 2015 autobiography.

Looking South also reminds me of the times I attended the event in the early ’80s while in college. My buddies and I would ride our street bikes to the base, grab our 6-pack-infused tank bags, and hike halfway up the hill with all the other crazies to watch the vehicular fireworks…of which there were plenty. Good times, for sure.

There’s good history here over and above what we know from On Any Sunday, and when I spied a “What Ever Happened To?” piece on Widowmaker in the Salt Lake Tribune from 2016, I figured I’d dig into things a little more, talk to some of the folks who figured prominently in the Widowmaker, and feature some photos and reporting on the event through the years.

The history of the Widowmaker is connected firmly to the history of the Utah Bees Motorcycle Club, which was established in 1960 according to hillclimb racer and longtime Bees member Mel Kimball Sr., who won the event in 1968 and whose sons, Mel Jr., and Kenny, won three times combined.

“The first event in that area

“The Bees club got letters from all over the world once On Any Sunday hit the theaters, and things just blew up from there, with riders coming in from all over the country, and even the world.” happened on the South side of that hill, on the Provo side,” Kimball Sr. told us for this story. “I was not a member of the Bees then. But then in ’62 or ’63, Bees officers J.D. Thurgood and Mick Allred took a look at the North side of the Point, where the legendary hillclimb ended up running for so many years, one of them saying something like, ‘Now that’s a widowmaker!’ — probably a reference to the dangerous mining equipment that killed so many through the decades. In all the years I did this, my kids included, we never heard of a hillclimb-racing death, but the name stuck anyway.”

And boy, did it.

Given its mountainous geography, Salt Lake City’s Wasatch front was a hotbed of sorts for hill climbing sport, and there are numerous reports of formal and informal meets happening in the late 1940s and ’50s in Salt Lake’s Millcreek Canyon, and also in nearby Park City. But none had the pure vertical or visceral chutzpah of the Draper hill once it was discovered and established, and none had the promotional benefit of On Any Sunday, which made the hill a worldwide phenomenon when the documentary debuted in the summer of 1971.

Top to bottom: Bees Motorcycle Club members in the early 1960s in Park City, Utah. Bulldogging a bike down the mountain, before Malcolm Smith showed ’em how it’s done. Mel Kimball Sr., spicing up an event poster from 1975. A casualty of the heavy partying that was part and parcel of the Widowmaker during its later years.

From there, hill climbing in Draper took on a whole new persona. “The Bees club got letters from all over the world once On Any Sunday hit the theaters,” Kimball Sr. told us, “and things just blew up from there, with riders coming in from all over the country, and even the world. I thought that was great, especially after realizing I was actually in the movie!

[True story, as Kimball Sr., in a redwhite-and-blue flag helmet and purple Bees vest, can be seen wrestling his Triumph down the hill right after Malcolm Smith finished his second run — and then rode his Husky down the hill.] I could never get enough of that event and couldn’t wait until the next year rolled around.”

Cycle World magazine wrote this back in mid 1970 about that particular event:

Utah’s 1970 Widowmaker Hillclimbs started on a bright sunny Sunday morning in April, and ran again the following Sunday. In a snowstorm. For seven years the Sportsman riders have been narrowing the gap between the high-run marks and the crest, and this was the year it happened: Just at dusk, after a long, long day of constant assaults by more than 250 riders, Mike Gibbon of Grants Pass, Oregon, reached the top; the first rider in the history of this event to have ever crossed the 600-ft. hill-top line, thus winning numerous prizes from intermountain donators and

“Just at dusk, after a long, long day of constant assaults by more than 250 riders, Mike Gibbon of Grants Pass, Oregon, reached the top; the first rider in the history of this event to have ever crossed the 600-ft. hill-top line”

CYCLE WORLD MAGAZINE 1970

“By the late ’80s, the Draper City Council and Draper police had had enough of the rambunctious hill-climbing crowds. Those who watched the event still remember the mass of people partying as the riders took their marks.”

SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

stealing the coveted 6-ft. “Hill Top” trophy that had been waiting to be claimed since 1964.

Mike was unsuccessful in reaching the top on his second run in the exhibition class, but was followed by two other riders who reached the top once only. They were Larry Huber of Indiana on his Harley and Larry Brisbin of Minnesota who, like Gibbon, rode a Triumph.

On the following snowy Sunday, Widowmaker was again conquered by one rider only, who astounded the crowd by performing the feat twice on both of his exhibition-class runs with chains and gasoline. He is

Bob Kopp of Mica, Wash., who rode a 650 Triumph with a 4-inch frame extension. Bob also placed first in the 650 A class on the same machine with a run of 550 ft. and first in the 500 A class on a smaller Triumph with a distance of 341 feet.

Over 250 riders, 75 from other states, competed for eight hours before 4,000 to 5,000 spectators. The exhibition class didn’t finish until dusk.

The Bee’s Motorcycle Club of Salt Lake City claim that the Widowmaker is the most ideal climbing hill in the West. The Club allows no practice runs and has the hill locked up except for the annual events.

Hillside Heroics

As motorcycles got lighter, more powerful and better-suspended during the 1970s and into the early

Things were getting crazy in other ways during those 1980s events. Crowds ballooned, and there just wasn’t the infrastructure in place to deal with the thousands of spectators who wanted in on the action.

’80s, especially off-road machines, hillclimb motorcycles followed suit — and the 600-foot, straight-run hill that Mike Gibbon from Grants Pass, Ore., first summited in 1970 (and so famously in On Any Sunday) became a little too easy. Promoters shifted the route to a longer and steeper section of the Draper hill, but within a few years it, too, proved too easily summitable, so they moved it again, adding length, ledges and S-turns to make things more challenging.

“Once a section proved beatable,” two-time (’86 and ’88) winner Mel Kimball Jr. told us for this story, “they’d work hard to make it more difficult the following year. Once Jim True won in the early ’80s on his Harley, which I think was the last year the course went straight up the mountain, they moved it to the right by 25 feet and added all sorts of obstacles and ledges and turns. It was a little crazy at times!”

The End Of The Line

Things were getting crazy in other ways during those 1980s events. Crowds ballooned, and there just wasn’t the infrastructure in place to deal with the thousands of spectators who wanted in on the action. Getting people off the freeway and to the upper shelf of the Point to park was difficult, as there were private property sections to be traversed, and also a seldom-used railroad crossing that had to be manned for two solid days.

Insurance became superexpensive, too, a $1 million policy necessary for the two days. Security bills were sky-high, and there was the ever-present rowdiness, which you’d expect from thousands of motorcyclists setting up camp at the base of a mountain for a day’s worth of fun. And eventually came the calls for environmental protection of the hillside, which was being chewed up.

The Salt Lake Tribune put things this way:

By the late ’80s, the Draper City Council and Draper police had had enough of the rambunctious hill-climbing crowds. At the 1987 Widowmaker about 30 people were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, and another 100 people for other alcohol-related offenses. Those who watched the event still remember the mass of people partying as the riders took their marks.

“It was crazy. The first word that comes to mind is just a wall of people,” said Kim Nelson, who watched the 1987 climb. “It was just people laughing and carrying on, and when somebody wrecks you would hear the ‘ohh’ and ‘ahh.’”

Draper Mayor Charles Hoffman had also become concerned about environmental damage on the hillside, scarred through years of biking. Worried about erosion, Hoffman demanded that the Bees Motorcycle Club replant grass on the hillside after the 1988 run. He was unsatisfied with their effort.

Nineteen-eighty-eight was it, the end of the line for the famed Widowmaker. Mel Kimball Jr. won it, and he values that particular trophy probably more than any other.

“We still talk about the Widowmaker,” Jr. told this author, “and still hang out with friends and Bees members who were involved from Day One, my Dad included. It was a great time to be a motorcyclist and a racer, and when folks drop by and see the bikes and trophies in the garage, it’s always a good conversation. I’m pretty sure the Widowmaker never killed anyone, but it’ll definitely be remembered for decades to come.”

With the famous hill’s location right next to I-15, and On Any Sunday continuing to resonate with motorcyclists the world over, it’s a good bet Kimball Jr. is right. AMA

Widowmaker in the 1980s also featured wildly powerful and customized hillclimbers, with Mel Kimball Jr.’s methanolburning, custom-framed, bighorsepower Honda CB1100F (1219cc) proving the point in dramatic fashion. Jr.’s other foot is on the left footpeg, if you were wondering if he still had it…