Calico 2/17&18 Clean up pictures...

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Looks like a good time. Glad to see there was a good turnout, and a lot of trash was picked up.

I saw a few rigs in your pics I know
 
Yeah, I know, I do a lot of stuff, but the best part of all...I do nothing for this one...I was not even planning to attend this event, I was saving my wheeling time for the Anza Borrego trip this week...I was on the "Los Amigos Invisibles" concert of Friday night with a bunch of Venezuelans and Alexis invite me to do this run with him, he need pictures... and Carol said yes!!! I guess that she forgot about Anza Borrego or I didn't remind her about it, anyways, I had a few hours to be ready...I just packed the camera, my sleeping bag and some shirts...it was a great event...you can "stole" all the pictures you want, that's why I shared in fisrt place, I need to delete some of them to reach the 90 pictures per trip in order to up-load it into our web (www.yopo4x4.com), but I need to do the write-up too, in English and Spanish...bummer!!!
 
It was an ok event. I think most probably had a better time than the few in our small group. Come around 9:30am and with the registration line backed up somewhere in Vegas, some people in our group were getting ancy so we headed out for "an hour" to go play.

Here is what the hills look like in the area.
 
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Roberto,

Great pics! Looks like you guys had a blast.
How was the concert?

Alvaro
 
Then we decided it would be fun to spend the next hour seeing how many toyotas it takes to pull a friends jeep out of the obstacle on Doran. He thought he could haul ass down the obstacle without a spotter. Then he somehow dissapeared from the rest of the pack.

So we end up taking an alternate route back to camp, since was almost 1:30 and the raffle was coming up soon. The blue pickup decided to come up on a 20' cliff and nose a little too close, and slid down and nose dived into a canyon about 5' wide. Then I tried to bring my pig back there, without considering how the hell I'd get out of a winding, off camber canyon as wide as my pig. No matter how hard I tried to pivot on rocks, I couldn't make the 120 degree turn for a little recovery. Ever try to drive a pig in reverse very off camber in a tight twisty spot. The rear steers itself. After about 45 minutes of trying to unwedge, the pig is short a taillight, blinker, mirror, A-pillar, upper and lower fender.

Then the bad got uglier. With the pickup wedged and his faithful new marlin tranny that only decides to completely stop functioning in life threatening situations(that's a different bitch though), we decided to pull the dead weight up and over the canyon with two tandem vehicles. the pickup was all the way at the very top and just about out when a strap broke, dropping the pickup 20 feet on its nose again, only this time much harder. It hit the ground, bounced against the wall, and came to rest how you see.
 
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The last pic in the previous post shows a little recovery. An anchored jeep used a winch to tuck the truck against the wall, while another found a way to crawl down into the steep canyon and pull him forward. A little forward, a little slack to the side, repeat 10X. Back on his wheels and the totaled truck becomes obvious. After the impact the tranny now has reverse and the ability to shift into two gears at once, which doesn't move a vehicle well. We got him out eventually, and back to camp around 5:30. I was a little dissapointed in the toyota crowd, as those with capable vehicles that I approached were too selfish and concerned about the raffle coming up, or didn't want to scratch their vehicles. Obviously I asked the wrong cruiser owners. So I found some outstanding 4 wheelers in their jeeps to assist. Hats off to those guys, they spent a lot of their time and even almost rolled a very shiny jeep in the recovery process. I imagine their winch cables got a little roughed up too sliding on rocks. A bronco tried to come in and help, but he broke an axle on the way in, leading to another event in its own.

So we get the truck to the side of the road and call AAA for a ride, after 3 hours a flatbed shows up with another truck on it, saying he'll pick them up in another 2 or so hours. So after a little fxxx you very much, we dragged the truck back to camp. The wheels were locked for some reason, but we dragged it anyways with drivetrain froze up, and got it in the morning.

We made a big mistake attempting a very serius recovery without the proper equipment, making it a more serious recovery. We also had some equipment and component failures that should have been adressed a while ago. I've also learned not to trust the reputation of some vendors products.

The bright side, the pig is getting the fender modications I want. I also now am going to redo my A-pillars with 0.25" wall tube to prevent this hole popping out windshield thing I do twice a year.
 
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What was the guy in the blue pickup thinking? Was that on the lower doran bypass?

He went to close to the edge of a dropoff to look, and his truck slid down. It was not intentional. It only landed on its side when a strap broke. That canyon isn't named, it is just a small side canyon that is intended for dirtbikes

It's kind of funny that every big 4x4 event has some vehicles destroyed, it just finally happened to one of our own. Now he says its getting tubed. After sitting on its side for almost an hour, it started right up without even a puff of oil smoke.
 
I gotta know who you talked to that wouldn't help..

:mad:

I saw the mini once you pulled it back to camp, sorry I was not there with my 40 to help out..
 
I gotta know who you talked to that wouldn't help..

:mad:

I saw the mini once you pulled it back to camp, sorry I was not there with my 40 to help out..

yea I second that, where did you ask? was in the corner by the Banks trailer, think you drank with us later?
 
It was made fairly clear at the driver's safety meeting to everyone that if you needed help to notify staging and we'll send out the calvary. We ran all of about 30 mins late for the meeting after registration. The blue Toyota pick up's buddy came to staging and we sent the recovery team from MJR and the OHV patrol group from the SBNFA to recover the lads that elected to stray off the designated trail, past the red signs identifying a closed area that motorcycles had been blazing through. It didn't have a thing to do with the cruiser community. In fact, the cruiser community was well represented and drug out more crap than most.

I don't have the final numbers yet but (2) 40' roll off's were overfilled with scrap metal and (3) additional 40' roll off containers were filled with trash and crap. (5) dumped vehicles were recovered. All of the graffiti was removed, (2) kiosks were installed, and 200 trail markers were installed with BLM. Over $4500 raised from the raffle for Blue Ribbon Coalition, Friends of the Rubicon, and Discovery Trails.

Overall, an excellent event hosted by Trail Crew/TLCA Los Angeles County. The grub provided by Banks Power was incredible and the t-shirts were appreciated. It was an awesome sight to see so many rigs venturing off in groups in different directions. The volunteers that participated did an excellent job. BLM was amazed at the cooperation and efforts to preserve this historic mining area. Props to all that attended and participated.

Mark
 
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