Events/Trails HIH9 Trip Report

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Reading all of these trail reports is such an inspiration... I'm really hoping to make the drive out from Florida next year. Keep dumping content into this thread please ! ! !
 
Reading all of these trail reports is such an inspiration... I'm really hoping to make the drive out from Florida next year. Keep dumping content into this thread please ! ! !
Check out Instagram too. @100sinthehills #hih9 #100sinthehills and #hih9insider are getting some traction.

Wonder if @SierraWheeler is watching? #hih9insider ;-)
 
Check out Instagram too. @100sinthehills #hih9 #100sinthehills and #hih9insider are getting some traction.

Wonder if @SierraWheeler is watching? #hih9insider ;)
Shhh....
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Being my fourth HIH in a row and always driving, I've been taking fewer and fewer pictures. Due to closures, we ended up doing some really fun trails I never would have signed up for (Yankee Boy, Governor's) as well as doing Imogene in the rain. This was also my first year bringing a girlfriend, sleeping platform, and awning which were all great. Things went kinda sideways on Saturday night during the raffle when we got word that one of our dogs got spooked by some horses being douchebags and decided to go over a 5-6ft fence at the dogsitter's and disappear - caught a little bit of crap from Chris when I lucked out with one of the Trekboxx tailgate covers in the raffle and didn't seem excited about it since I was so worried about an MIA dog even though I've been wanting to replace my beat and stained tailgate carpet. We ended up breaking down camp at about 1am and bombing back to Salt Lake ASAP, dodging both sleep and deer. I ended up putting the new sleeping platform to even more use once we figured out where our fugitive dog was hanging out and checking live traps every 2-3 hours for a three nights straight. We got her back after a full week on the lam, no worse for wear other than an inch long nick from barbed wire and about 5lbs lighter - both my girlfriend and I ended up losing about 10lbs each.

I went ahead and just bought 4 tires and put the spare back under the truck. The commonality / availability of BFGs in a standard size at major retailers is a reason I will continue to run this tire size/combo.

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You really went for it! I got my first ever flat tire on anything with a motor the first day and just sent it the rest of the weekend. As of yesterday I've got a new set of 4 on the way (bigger and nastier), but my LX isn't my DD and I didn't have a very long drive home so not too time critical.

If it's not clear at this point... I really like radios and I think everyone should get into HAM because it is fun :)

Get a load of this nerd. Probably an engineer or something.
 
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Ok finally getting around to posting this.

This was my first HIH and my first big event like this. The location and family friendly nature of this event are really great, unfortunately once I booked this we realized that my wife wouldn't have enough PTO to do this along with our other summer trips. So I invited my dad to fly out from Bend, OR to join me. He has never really been off roading, so it was a great first introduction for him.

After getting a bunch on last minute little things done to the cruiser (coil spacers, new rear sway bar links, preload check, new snap rings, torsion bar reinforcement brackets, and an ebay snorkel) we were put together and ready to roll. We drove over Wednesday, got camp set up and headed to happy hour. Thanks @nakman and Mike from BIOR. Great ice breaker to start meeting people. Meeting a wide variety of people from across the country was one of our favorite parts of the event.

Thursday we did Stony Pass to Kite Lake. I had not run this before and it was a great trail. Fun water crossings and I marked a number of nice camping spots on the way to Kite lake. Driving up the waterfalls coming down the trail was a fun little technical section and my dad and I took a quick plunge into the lake.
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Followed @Beanzermin on a number of trails. What a sweet rig.
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On Friday we did Ophir, alta lakes, Telluride, and Last Dollar. I noticed a clanging when going over bumps that sounded like something was clearly not connected right under the truck. Discovered that the new rear sway bar link I had just installed, well wasn't installed anymore. I had also replaced the bushings, bolt, nut and spacer tube. My best guess is that I didn't tighten the nut enough, it walked back and then under stress the bolt popped out and bent the link where the bolt goes through. So at lunch (Alta Lakes) I took the link bracket off the frame to stop the clanking.
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I could really feel the disconnected rear sway bar on the road down into Telluride. Was thinking about scrapping the rest of that day to run back to Montrose and find a hardware store. Well you know what we stumbled across in downtown Telluride... an ACE Hardware FTW! Grabbed some grade 8 bolts (SAE, but ok), bent the link back and got everything bolted up before we left Telluride. My most successful "trail" repair to date. One of those things that makes the rest of the day great.
 
We convinced my wife to take friday afternoon off and drive across the state with our 2YO to join us. They arrived late friday evening. My dad and my son were probably the most excited about this, even though my dad got moved down to the back of the cruiser.

Fortunate for me I wake up at sunrise when camping. Can't help it. I think some others posted pictures of the sunrise reflecting off the clouds on Saturday morning, but I think I got a good one:
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A few minutes later is was gone.

Saturday we ran Imogene from the Ouray side to the top (it was still closed on the Telluride side). I hadn't run it in this direction which was allot of fun. Small technical sections, movin water crossings and high alpine. Got some great pics at the top.
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And poser rock. I really thought my wife would take Harry (son) out of the rig while I pulled up onto the rock. It is a little unnerving and I wouldn't do it without a spotter. Thanks @willbt .
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We decided to hang out in Ouray for a few hours while the rest of the group ran corkscrew. On our way back to Silverton the power of CB (Uniden PRO510XL, home wired by a non expert to a firestick) I was able to reconnect with Stan as we came over red mountain pass and they were doing super secret. So we pulled off and ran that quickly before the festivities of Saturday night. My 2 cents on the radio discussion is that most people already have CB and if you take a little time to get it in shape, it seems to work fine for me. With that being said acquiring an technicians license (HAM) is not difficult, cheaper than a GRMS license, gets you more frequencies and capabilities (repeaters), if you are sitting next to them someone else is allowed to talk on it, and most importantly I already have it so I wouldn't want to get a GRMS license.

Great raffle on Saturday night with just a ridiculous level of support from vendors of all sizes including "big" companies like CVT to people that make stuff in the garage like @Ramathorn15. Thanks again to @nakman for his support of this event where he gave away at least 2-3 racks in addition to his happy hour and bourbon glass support. I won a comeup seal gen2 12.5 winch that I am stoked to get installed and pull (hopefully someone else out) with thanks to Ben at dissent offroad. It really does influence future buying decisions to see this type of support. Thanks also to Chris and Stan and everyone else that helped support this event in one way or another. We had a blast and it was in big part thanks to all of you!

Sunday morning we were scheduled to run Black bear, which may or may not open this year. So we did a solo run up Hurricane and Cali to show my dad Animas Fork ghost town. Got back into Silverton to show Harry the train and we headed back East. Got to Salida for dinner and my wife pushed on a few more hours so she could go to work early Monday morning. My dad, Harry and myself pulled up into the hills outside Salida to camp for the night. Was pretty cool to sit around the fire with 3 generations. No pictures here but what a great trip. Might be hard to squeeze this in next year, but we definitely plan to attend again.
 
I'll dp a trip report shortly, but for now i wanted to thank everyone who made this event happen. We loved every moment of it! This was our first, but won't be our last! and i second the one ticket system.

I'm attaching a link to a google photo album, my brother went crazy with continuous shooting mode on the camera and i ended up with 11k photos! You're more than welcome to add, download, or edit them, and if you want full resolution copies, just ask. And if you share them online, a little credit won't hurt. @abesta

These are the highlights i found, i got tired so i probably missed a bunch, but i'll upload as i find more. i'm also trying to figure out how to get 11k uploaded just in case you want to sift through them later. Enjoy!


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This guy ends up walking up to my wife and i, not a care in the world.

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Then this loud bird was going non stop. i look up, and there he is. So i snap some photos of him/her.

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Love reading these trip reports and seeing all the cool pictures. One downside of “being in charge” is that you can’t quite sink into all of the awesomeness that is in those mountains. I am good at replying to emails about whether or not the porta potties have hypoallergenic hand sanitizer in them, though. Always a trade off, I suppose. 🙂
 
Being my fourth HIH in a row and always driving, I've been taking fewer and fewer pictures. Due to closures, we ended up doing some really fun trails I never would have signed up for (Yankee Boy, Governor's) as well as doing Imogene in the rain. This was also my first year bringing a girlfriend, sleeping platform, and awning which were all great. Things went kinda sideways on Saturday night during the raffle when we got word that one of our dogs got spooked by some horses being douchebags and decided to go over a 5-6ft fence at the dogsitter's and disappear - caught a little bit of crap from Chris when I lucked out with one of the Trekboxx tailgate covers in the raffle and didn't seem excited about it since I was so worried about an MIA dog even though I've been wanting to replace my beat and stained tailgate carpet. We ended up breaking down camp at about 1am and bombing back to Salt Lake ASAP, dodging both sleep and deer. I ended up putting the new sleeping platform to even more use once we figured out where our fugitive dog was hanging out and checking live traps every 2-3 hours for a three nights straight. We got her back after a full week on the lam, no worse for wear other than an inch long nick from barbed wire and about 5lbs lighter - both my girlfriend and I ended up losing about 10lbs each.



You really went for it! I got my first ever flat tire on anything with a motor the first day and just sent it the rest of the weekend. As of yesterday I've got a new set of 4 on the way (bigger and nastier), but my LX isn't my DD and I didn't have a very long drive home so not too time critical.



Get a load of this nerd. Probably an engineer or something.
Hey man. Sorry to hear about the dog trouble. Didn’t realize. Also, I drank some beers, I apologize if I rubbed you the wrong way at raffle. Not intended. Glad you guys made it out. And recovered your dog.
 
has anyone else come back from HIH with a leaking rear main seal? I only noticed it because I laid under my truck to examine the under carriage post trip. After talking to a few people, they think it was all the water crossings, but if that's the case, everyone was doing a lot of water crossings..... hopefully I am the only one.
 
We had a really great time at HIH9!

Just can't say enough great things about this incredibly well executed event! We had great weather and some neat opportunities given the snow conditions. No Black Bear, no Poughkeepsie, no Imogene, no problem! We had Stony Pass, Kite Lake, and avalanche debris tours, and more that were just awesome.

Huge thanks to all the sponsors for supporting this event with boots on the ground and raffle prizes.

Got lots of pics to go through but here's a few.
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Just a great time all around with great people!
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Awesome event - just like all of the previous ones. I'll let the photos do the talking.

 

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