A poorly organized, haphazard trail run was thrown together for this past Sunday. Our goal was to run the John Bull trail from east to west, then move west to the start of Holcomb Creek trail and take that to its terminus. Several odd occurences conspired against an early start - one of our party was physically attacked in a 7-11 parking lot for looking at someone the wrong way at 6:30 AM. He decked the guy and went inside and called the police and got some coffee. It IS L.A., so part of a normal day. By the time they arrived at AMMO's place it was just AMMO in his 80 and Rob&Todd in Rob's 1st gen IFS 4Runner on 33" mt's. They cruised over to my place to the drone of their 5.29's (both rigs) and it was just the three trucks that went up the mountain. We didn't actually hit the start of John Bull until high noon.
The start of John Bull is now officially lame. AMMO went first and it didn't even require locking up, and very little steering. The 4Runner was running a 4" suspension lift and no sliders and it had no problems either. I of course wet my pants and took the bypass. There were no other trucks anywhere in site all day. We got to the end of the trail by about 1:45 PM and that was with a few stops, a quick snack, and finding as many places for AMMO to take poser pics of his truck as possible.
There were still quite a few fun spots on John Bull but no one really ever had a problem and no recovery gear ever came out. AMMO and I attempted every stupid line we could as well. He lead up a really nice climb over a couple of nice boulders and kept sliding off eventually getting denied. When I got on it I came down on the ds slider so hard he said it flexed the slider almost into the rocker! That was about it. At the end there was a little "fun" bowl with some water and mud and we did the obligate splashing, mud slinging, etc.
We all seemed to be directionally challenged that day even with about 18 maps and two gps units so it took us a while to actually get to the Holcolmb Crk trailhead. By now it was about 2:30 PM and since everyone had obligations back home we decided to go in a short way and then turn around rather than risk running the whole trail and being really late. We screwed around in the creek and up the opposite climb for quite a while and I managed to get high-centered on my ps slider cat converter skid plate and part of the xfer case skid. Lots of forward and backward and I managed to kiss the only tree in 100 ft and break one of my front manual hubs.
We got into Fawnskin just about 5 pm, aired up and got the nice sunset view as we made it down the mtn back to the devil's playground.
I saved the gps track if anyone wants it and I had no camera with me so I have no pics at all. AMMO had something that was electrical with a little lens and pointed it at all sorts of stuff but I don't know....
The start of John Bull is now officially lame. AMMO went first and it didn't even require locking up, and very little steering. The 4Runner was running a 4" suspension lift and no sliders and it had no problems either. I of course wet my pants and took the bypass. There were no other trucks anywhere in site all day. We got to the end of the trail by about 1:45 PM and that was with a few stops, a quick snack, and finding as many places for AMMO to take poser pics of his truck as possible.
There were still quite a few fun spots on John Bull but no one really ever had a problem and no recovery gear ever came out. AMMO and I attempted every stupid line we could as well. He lead up a really nice climb over a couple of nice boulders and kept sliding off eventually getting denied. When I got on it I came down on the ds slider so hard he said it flexed the slider almost into the rocker! That was about it. At the end there was a little "fun" bowl with some water and mud and we did the obligate splashing, mud slinging, etc.
We all seemed to be directionally challenged that day even with about 18 maps and two gps units so it took us a while to actually get to the Holcolmb Crk trailhead. By now it was about 2:30 PM and since everyone had obligations back home we decided to go in a short way and then turn around rather than risk running the whole trail and being really late. We screwed around in the creek and up the opposite climb for quite a while and I managed to get high-centered on my ps slider cat converter skid plate and part of the xfer case skid. Lots of forward and backward and I managed to kiss the only tree in 100 ft and break one of my front manual hubs.
We got into Fawnskin just about 5 pm, aired up and got the nice sunset view as we made it down the mtn back to the devil's playground.
I saved the gps track if anyone wants it and I had no camera with me so I have no pics at all. AMMO had something that was electrical with a little lens and pointed it at all sorts of stuff but I don't know....
