Living in MI in the early 1970's, and riding my Yamaha 360 Enduro, I had a bunch of friends with whom I rode offroad. There were many trails and places to ride, one of the places you could usually ride for miles offroad were powerline rights-of-way. Other places that were good to ride were sand and gravel pits. Back then, if they weren't in constant use, the pits would be open, and anyone could just go right in and ride to your heart's content. Going up the hills was fun, but going down was almost as-much fun. I was very hesitant when I saw these guys riding straight off a 50 foot drop to the sand pit floor, but because of the taper of the sand bank, as the front of the bike dropped once you cleared the lip of the top of the sand pit, on your way down, the front wheel would meet the wall of sand, and if you kept your weight way-back, on the pegs and butt over the rear fender, you would just glide down to the sand pit floor, on the slope of the side wall of the pit. The guys I initially watched were riding Bultacos and OSSA's, but when one guy was doing it on a stripped Honda 350 Scrambler, I figured, just be-sure to get a good launch off the top, so the back of the bike clears the lip before the front wheel drops below the lip, and keep your weight 'way-back. That was the trick, and once you'd done it a few times, you realized your level of danger was almost nil because it's only sand if you fell, and you're essentially coasting until you get close to the bottom of the hill, and theen you get on the gas to accelerate off the hill and onto the sand pit floor. Great fun, once you learned how.
Going up, if you had enough forward momentum to get your front wheel up and past the top lip of the sand pit wall, then you would be able to usually get the rear wheel over the top of the cliff too. If you didn't, either someone at the top would help you by dragging the front wheel or the fork tube up while you let the rear knobby churn your way up, or you just rolled backwards and turned the bike to the side, until you got the front wheel pointed down the slope. Then a bit of throttle to get started down the hill, and hike your butt over the rear fender on the pegs, and roll to the bottom to try again. Often, if you were using a path other bikes were using to get to the top of the hill, there would be a 'chute' into which your bike would enter just-below the top of the wall. That's where the guys on the 360's could just use horsepower to dig the chute a bit-deeper, as you went into the chute and finally, up onto the top of the sand pit cliff.
One of the things to be sure to do was to keep your weight on the 'upside' of the wall of sand, if you weren't able to make it over the top of the cliff, on your way up, hillclimbing. That way, you could just lean into the hill, and the bike would stop, upright. A couple of 'back & forth' wagging of the handlebars would drop the front wheel lower than the rear wheel, and then you would use a bit of power to ride diagonally across the side of the wall of the sand pit, and drop the front wheel down. Then, it's a trailing-throttle trip down, to try again.
Failure to keep your weight on the 'high-side' of the sand pit hill would cause you to drop the bike to the hill 'down-side' which usually was more embarassing than dangerous. When that happened, you and the bike would have your own downward trajectories. You had to 'push-off' the bike as it toppled-over. A lack of control like that, and everyone in the riding party would be hooting and hollering at you, as you tumbled down the hill. Usually the bike would dig into the sand and come to a halt, but if it was a hard-packed hill, the bike could keep coming, and you needed to scramble out of the way as you rolled-down, to avoid being hit by the bike. No one in our group ever broke any bones hillclimbing, but at Mt. Garfield, a stop on the AMA hillclimbing championship circuit, and one of the oldest AMA competition locations, sometimes people got hurt. They had to have two ambulances, because they needed one on-scene so the competition could continue.
When I was riding that summer, on my new Yamaha dirtbike, I'd get about 45 days out of a Metzler 4:50 x 18" rear knobby, before it was too-worn to get decent grip on the sand and gravel, or dirt. I was pretty-used to the marginal traction it gave on the street, because it was licensed, but within a half-year, I had it permanently stripped for offroad use. I still have that 360 single, what a load of fun, and it made me a better street rider because of the handling dynamics in marginal traction situations I learned on it.
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