Evel Knievel was born and raised in Butte, MT. Every year they hold an Evel Knievel Days festival featuring stuntmen, motocross, bmx shows, base jumpers and even a flying snowmobile (sorry I didn’t catch a picture of the last one).

Here is Geoff Aaron doing his trials bike show. He climbed over all of these obstacles for about 20 minutes without putting a foot down on the ground. Pretty impressive!

There were also base jumpers. We watched the lift go up and up and up over the Original Mine Yard. Not for the faint of heart!

The festivities included Evel Kross on a course made earlier in the week. Although it was only 5 laps most people, especially the amateurs, looked exhausted by the end of it. A few had trouble getting over the tires.

There was also a downhill mountain bike course and a pedal drift trike course. These are basically trikes with pvc over the wheels to make them slide. Many of the competitors launched themselves into spins down the hill. It was pretty interesting to see.

The crowning event was a recreation of one of Evel Knievel’s early jumps. This was performed by his grandson. Originally it was supposed to be using a vintage bike but they didn’t. It ended up being on a Kawasaki. Below are pictures of the bike similar to one Evel used for a bit back in the 60’s, a picture of the trucks being jumped, and a picture of the jump itself (from a distance). Many people showed up for it! His grandson, Jesse McCloud, was wearing a vintage looking jumpsuit and Bell helmet. According to a newspaper article he hadn’t really done any ramp to ramp jumps before a few practice runs that day to even though the jump wasn’t the biggest it was still pretty cool.

The official Evel Knievel days site is here.