Well, we didn't have a big group show up, but we had enough to have a good time.
Graham was there with his (little) girls in the Lexus - Mom stayed home to prep fpr Turkey Day. Abq Jim showed up in his 4Runner. Dave and Jennie in their Tacoma, and I was in the 80.
When we first pulled up and were airing down, the place was pretty deserted as you might expect, but we did have a nice almost-full moon. The wind was whipping the sand around pretty good in certain spots during our run, and the temps were quite a bit colder than they have been lately. But it's probably a good thing we weren't out there last night, or we would have had a rain/snow combination to deal with.
A side note - Ellen and I were driving home from Rio Rancho to the East Mountains last night around 9:00, and we came through one heck of a blizzard. It snowed all the way across town. We've got a couple inches of snow on the ground here this morning, and it's just started to lightly snow again. We need it - it's been too dry. Hopefully this weather helped cut down the forest fire in the Manzanos.
Back to the trip report - we had a great time. I think Dave and Jennie were impressed with what their stock Tacoma can handle. Graham led us up over the knife edge entry, and then we took off down some steep sand hills to the south. Eventually, we ended up near Snoopy Rock and the mini-Lion's Back obstacles. We parked the Tacoma for a few minutes, loaded up Dave & Jennie in the 80 and played around in the other three trucks for a bit. After we went up the first steep incline to get onto mini-Lion's Back, I took a wrong line and lifted a front tire way up. Felt a little tippy there for a second, but we made it through.
We got the Tacoma back on the road and followed through that steep off-camber section back to the wash on the north side. I'm used to coming down this section from the north, so we were going back up it and at night. It was a very different perspective. All the usual lines coming down didn't look familiar at all going the other direction. Nothing too bad, but I think it was good practice for Dave and the Tacoma.
We got back over to the place where there are two rocks to play on (one large and one small). Some of you will recall the large rock has claimed rear sway-bar mounts in the past (Broke Back Sway Bar Mountain, or some such thing). We mostly left them alone this evening, but Abq Jim decided he wanted to try driving over the little rock. After a couple of attempts, he made it up and over, but not without a large noise as he snapped his CV-joint. It was a bummer, but luckily he has locking hubs in the front, so he just unlocked them and did the rest of the run in 2WD. It sounds like has has figured out that all his other mods (35 inch tires, front locker, double transfer cases) have highlighted the weak link in his rig when he really pushes it - the CV joints/shafts in the IFS. But he's got it all figured out - he's building his Formula Toy on an '85 mini-truck chassis for the hard-core wheeling.
It was pretty uneventful from there. We wandered back to the north wash with a couple of side trips off into the rocks. We headed back up and over and aired up and that was the end of our adventure.
For my first night run, I would highly recommend it. Most of our communication was over the radios, and there wasn't a lot of standing around outside, since it was chilly. But it was very cool to drive around out there in the moonlight (no pun intended). Let's do it again sometime soon!
Evan
Graham was there with his (little) girls in the Lexus - Mom stayed home to prep fpr Turkey Day. Abq Jim showed up in his 4Runner. Dave and Jennie in their Tacoma, and I was in the 80.
When we first pulled up and were airing down, the place was pretty deserted as you might expect, but we did have a nice almost-full moon. The wind was whipping the sand around pretty good in certain spots during our run, and the temps were quite a bit colder than they have been lately. But it's probably a good thing we weren't out there last night, or we would have had a rain/snow combination to deal with.
A side note - Ellen and I were driving home from Rio Rancho to the East Mountains last night around 9:00, and we came through one heck of a blizzard. It snowed all the way across town. We've got a couple inches of snow on the ground here this morning, and it's just started to lightly snow again. We need it - it's been too dry. Hopefully this weather helped cut down the forest fire in the Manzanos.
Back to the trip report - we had a great time. I think Dave and Jennie were impressed with what their stock Tacoma can handle. Graham led us up over the knife edge entry, and then we took off down some steep sand hills to the south. Eventually, we ended up near Snoopy Rock and the mini-Lion's Back obstacles. We parked the Tacoma for a few minutes, loaded up Dave & Jennie in the 80 and played around in the other three trucks for a bit. After we went up the first steep incline to get onto mini-Lion's Back, I took a wrong line and lifted a front tire way up. Felt a little tippy there for a second, but we made it through.
We got the Tacoma back on the road and followed through that steep off-camber section back to the wash on the north side. I'm used to coming down this section from the north, so we were going back up it and at night. It was a very different perspective. All the usual lines coming down didn't look familiar at all going the other direction. Nothing too bad, but I think it was good practice for Dave and the Tacoma.
We got back over to the place where there are two rocks to play on (one large and one small). Some of you will recall the large rock has claimed rear sway-bar mounts in the past (Broke Back Sway Bar Mountain, or some such thing). We mostly left them alone this evening, but Abq Jim decided he wanted to try driving over the little rock. After a couple of attempts, he made it up and over, but not without a large noise as he snapped his CV-joint. It was a bummer, but luckily he has locking hubs in the front, so he just unlocked them and did the rest of the run in 2WD. It sounds like has has figured out that all his other mods (35 inch tires, front locker, double transfer cases) have highlighted the weak link in his rig when he really pushes it - the CV joints/shafts in the IFS. But he's got it all figured out - he's building his Formula Toy on an '85 mini-truck chassis for the hard-core wheeling.
It was pretty uneventful from there. We wandered back to the north wash with a couple of side trips off into the rocks. We headed back up and over and aired up and that was the end of our adventure.
For my first night run, I would highly recommend it. Most of our communication was over the radios, and there wasn't a lot of standing around outside, since it was chilly. But it was very cool to drive around out there in the moonlight (no pun intended). Let's do it again sometime soon!
Evan
