We ran into two young ladies and their one eyed dog on the first part of the descent. Man, the one girl looked like some sort of outdoor fitness model ! We stopped and chatted for a bit, and they said they had hiked the 3.5 miles from the trailhead to that location. I told them I was glad I didn't have to do that and could just drive it instead. We wished them good luck and continued on down.
Shortly after exiting the portion called bowling ball alley I told Travis something didn't sound right on the rig. About 20 yards further down I told him we no longer had any brakes ! Having the pedal all the way to the floor while bumping your way down a steep mountain trail was not my idea of fun. It turns out the funny sound I was hearing was a loose front sway bar. This is where all the time and money spent on that hand brake paid off. I swept the truck out of gear and pulled hard up on the hand brake. We finally got stopped and I let the front slide into an embankment to keep us in place. Travis jumped out and looked under the truck only to notice brake fluid leaking out of the PS front hard line. This sucked as we were on a narrow portion of the trail about 3 miles from the bottom.
I had noticed a small cutout about 30 yards behind us and up-hill. With Travis guiding me I was able to back the truck past it, then popping it in and out of gear while using the hand brake I got it nosed in and stopped before it could slide over the edge. Initial attempts to crimp off the line and use the remaining three brakes didn't work. We had no choice but to pack up and leave the rig there. We made it down to the runner in under and hour. It then took another hour to get the runner back down the obstacles we had come up and to the main road. After that it was a 26 mile drive to NAPA in Fairplay where we were able to piece together the parts and tools we needed for a field repair.
At this point I was both physically and mentally exhausted. I was really not liking our chances of making a repair that night. I was also not wild about leaving my rig at the top of some mountain and having to come back and spend the morning trying to fix it. We decided to at least drive to the trailhead and see what the weather conditions were like.
There was a light rain coming down by the time we got there but we decided to try to make the repair before nightfall. We also decided not to try and take Travis's rig up any further than the mill as it was actually faster to cover ground on foot. So we packed up all the tools, the spare parts, along with two quarts worth of brake fluid and headed for the top. Here is a pic from the rescue mission....
For those that don't know, that's my out of breath face. I also didn't realize Travis was snapping a pic, or I would have done my hair. The elevation up there is even more breathtaking than the view ! Despite that we were able to cover the 3 miles in about 50 minutes.
. We decided we didn't feel like hiking it so we just went on over Tomichi pass....
