Well I must say we had a very good day of wheeling today. Had three trucks on the trail, would have had four but while airing down Chris Cass noticed his driver front wheel was missing a dozen of the rim screws on his beadlock! He decided to mount his spare and head home as he was afraid to lose any more screws.
So that left us with three trucks. Rob Teague in his 40 with me as a passenger and navigator, Stan in his very competent 80 series, and Aaron and Chris in the Trekker. It was cold in the staging area (was 19 when I left the house this morning!), and I was glad to hop into the 40 and get some heat going. There was about a dozen new Broncos there, another group of mostly jeeps (maybe twenty in the group) which were led by RC trail riders.
We headed left out of the staging area, down the hill past the old entrance, past Jotters then up trail 3. Aaron elected to take the Trekker up one of the rocky hill climbs, and we drove around met him at the top of the hill. Unfortunately the large group of Broncos were just heading into trail C and we decided to make an adjustment in plans and try to get out and around that group. It worked and we were the first onto the pole line and over into the west property.
We did one of the descents onto H and headed down into the park. Did 12C then 12B, then down and around and did the hillclimb on 12A. From there we did 10, and went around on 11 till we ran into a large group blocking the main trails down by the washouts on 11. We made another adjustment and did trail 23, the entire loop. Aaron did a little section of Beaver Creek while we were down there. Came back out onto 11 into another smaller traffic jam. Cleared away a bunch of Broncos and squeezed through, around and up 11 at the bottom of the park then went down 19B, then up 19A to 11. From there we went up 15 which is washing out considerably making it impossible to avoid the passenger side of the truck scraping in the substantial briars growing there. Wouldn't take a vehicle with nice paint up there anymore. At the top Aaron took a trip up Crawl daddy and met us on trail J.
From there we went up H, up one of the climbs to the power line, then up one of the 101 hills (the one with the log across it) and that was it for the wheeling. Headed back to the staging area and aired up. Got out of the park about 3:15. All in all a very good day. It warmed up about 2:30 as the sun made a welcomed appearance.
Stan was making a shakedown run on his V8 powered 80, it performed flawlessly. He did a real nice job on the conversion. Rob was also on a but of a shake down after just rewiring his 40 completely and adding fuel injection. It worked great and his 2F ran smoother than any I've ever driven.
There were only a very few other Toyotas in the park. I did get a chance to talk with a guy from Jersey in a green 4Runner and showed him the IH8MUD and Coal Miner Cruiser Classic websites. Told jim about the club and the number of members from Jersey in it. I think he'll check it out.
So that left us with three trucks. Rob Teague in his 40 with me as a passenger and navigator, Stan in his very competent 80 series, and Aaron and Chris in the Trekker. It was cold in the staging area (was 19 when I left the house this morning!), and I was glad to hop into the 40 and get some heat going. There was about a dozen new Broncos there, another group of mostly jeeps (maybe twenty in the group) which were led by RC trail riders.
We headed left out of the staging area, down the hill past the old entrance, past Jotters then up trail 3. Aaron elected to take the Trekker up one of the rocky hill climbs, and we drove around met him at the top of the hill. Unfortunately the large group of Broncos were just heading into trail C and we decided to make an adjustment in plans and try to get out and around that group. It worked and we were the first onto the pole line and over into the west property.
We did one of the descents onto H and headed down into the park. Did 12C then 12B, then down and around and did the hillclimb on 12A. From there we did 10, and went around on 11 till we ran into a large group blocking the main trails down by the washouts on 11. We made another adjustment and did trail 23, the entire loop. Aaron did a little section of Beaver Creek while we were down there. Came back out onto 11 into another smaller traffic jam. Cleared away a bunch of Broncos and squeezed through, around and up 11 at the bottom of the park then went down 19B, then up 19A to 11. From there we went up 15 which is washing out considerably making it impossible to avoid the passenger side of the truck scraping in the substantial briars growing there. Wouldn't take a vehicle with nice paint up there anymore. At the top Aaron took a trip up Crawl daddy and met us on trail J.
From there we went up H, up one of the climbs to the power line, then up one of the 101 hills (the one with the log across it) and that was it for the wheeling. Headed back to the staging area and aired up. Got out of the park about 3:15. All in all a very good day. It warmed up about 2:30 as the sun made a welcomed appearance.
Stan was making a shakedown run on his V8 powered 80, it performed flawlessly. He did a real nice job on the conversion. Rob was also on a but of a shake down after just rewiring his 40 completely and adding fuel injection. It worked great and his 2F ran smoother than any I've ever driven.
There were only a very few other Toyotas in the park. I did get a chance to talk with a guy from Jersey in a green 4Runner and showed him the IH8MUD and Coal Miner Cruiser Classic websites. Told jim about the club and the number of members from Jersey in it. I think he'll check it out.
