I thought I saw a blurb looking to see who wants to wheel at Anthracite this weekend- possibly tomorrow (Friday). Anyone going?
Wheeling this week????? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter shmukster
- Start date
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Aaron and I will meet you in the lot of Anthracite tomorrow morning. I'll have the '96 and Aaron is debuting the '92. Maybe we'll do a little exploring on the new property across the street.
I would be very interested in hearing about the trails across the street, particularly the ones circled in red.
Is there enough there to take up a day of wheeling?
Is there enough there to take up a day of wheeling?
Apparently, that side of the property is a 17 mile loop with various offshoots. The one time we were there we did hit that section circled on the right. It's pretty short, but a nice trail. Aaron @Pacer put together a nice video of that day.
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=cFU5QWJlUTlVaXFGYXBWd240WUdqZFFKWWVuaEJB
I think we'll do a more thorough exploration tomorrow. The other circled area looks enticing, but it's a mystery and was not noted on the old map, which is what we were using.
- Thread starter
- #6
I'll be there for 8:30
Looking like Sept till I can run with you guys again.. This weekend Poe Paddy with the grandson for a bit of camping, light wheelin' and hiking, July is never a good month, then in August we're headed for the Adirondacks with the other grandson. See you soon !!
Sweet! What's the read on the new trails?
So.... how'd you get it out of there?
- Thread starter
- #12
It certainly was an interesting day. First news we got was that the area across the road is closed Fridays for maintenance. Drat, the plan was to scout that area of the park. It was raining in the staging area when we got there and rained off and on all morning in to the early afternoon. Cleared up at that time and got hot and humid.
So we picked out some blue marked trails on the lower (left side of the property heading away from the staging area) side of the park. So we decided to do the Excelsior Swamp trail even though it was already raining....... how wet could it be? Not a long trail but lots of water. We took bypasses around some of them but not all. The one where Aaron slipped into the hole was tricky. On the correct (left) line he got his front diff dug into the crown, and when he backed up it sucked him over into the hole. Crusha and I didn't see it we were in the lead and didn't know what happened until Aaron beeped his horn.
How'd we get it out? Wasn't easy. His right front was hard stuck against something under three feet of muddy water. Couldn't go forward and couldn't go backwards. We hooked up a strap to try to pull him straight forward but it wouldn't budge, all the time concerned about it going further over onto the passenger side. We ran Crusha back through a tight lane so he could pull Aaron at an angle forward and toward the driver side. Maximized our chances at success by digging some of the crown away form the front tire that was exposed, used a high lift jack for the digging and scraping! That finally worked, pulled him out of the muck and we found this:
Yes notice the front tire off the bead!His spare was a stock sized tire still hung under the back of the truck so we pulled Crusha's 35 and mounted it on Aaron's truck- gave him three 33's and a 35! Was an ugly job changing it the area was full of sticker bushes, of course it was raining and damn muddy! Damn tire with the water in it must have weighed 90 pounds! Glad I didn't try to lift it onto Crusha's swing out tire carrier..... Was glad we had a Toyota bottle jack instead of having used a high lift. After all that we drove out and headed for another trail- here's the exit of the "rescue lane" we had to use:
Then we finished that trial, and found (yes, found is the correct word!!!) the beginning of another new to us blue trail, Muddy Shackle. Thankfully, and surprisingly it turned out to be not muddy at all but a nice rock crawling trail. Out of that trail it was short jaunt to the Bucket trail, on which Aaron's frame broke (on his 62) his last trip to Anthracite. This is a very tight short trail with nice rock crawling, good technical stuff. Tight for the big 80 series trucks, running it in my 40 last time out was nice. We stopped for lunch and Crusha broke out a fleet of radio controlled cars and we had a good time playing around with them.
From there it was off to find some more blue trails in that area. We stumbled onto a trail called the BA extension which was again, a nice short trail with technical rock crawling. Tight in places. Discovered that AAOA has name my culvert trail the BA trail. We've done that several times and didn't do it yesterday but it is a favorite of mine. Then we found the EXC trail, with a short nasty hillclimb right at the beginning of it. Both 80's took a shot at it but Aaron's truck has only an Aussie locker in the rear and Crusha had only his front locker available (rear electric locker not engaging). Crusha with the use of the gas pedal in his supercharged 80 almost made it but the lack of traction on the muddy loose slope prohibited it. We drove the rest of the trail, some of it through a pine forest but the rest of it rock crawling not difficult.
from there we went over to the twister trail, my favorite trail in the whole park. It was interesting in the wet conditions. By this time it had stopped raining but the trails were of course very wet. Both guys had to use their gas pedal extensively to get up the second section of the trail. Currently there is a large rock exposed and the best (only???) viable line is over the rock with your passenger side tires. Once up to the top we were going to go down Barney Rubble but decided to try to find some of the harder trails in the are on the map marked Boyscout and SOB. The trails are not marked at all up there and we ended up trying some neat stuff, names unknown, on one of which Aaron did some further damage to his driver rear fender. We had to get the strap out again to get him up out of the chute where he was jammed. Once out of there he blasted up the hillclimb out of that trail.
That was enough for the day, it was 3 o'clock and my ass was dragging. We headed out to the staging area and aired up. Aaron cleaned the bead and rim on his wheel (still mounted conventionally on Crusha's swing out!!) and we re-seated the bead using the parks's air compressor. Popped right back on so we switched tires around again and got Aaron's back on four 33" tires. Hopefully he made it home without getting a flat!!! All in all it was a very good day, found a lot of new stuff and had a blast. Anyone reading this be aware that you should have a good correct properly inflated spare, whatever recovery gear you might need including a suitable safe jack, and preferably a winch. best to maximize your chances of getting out of an unforeseen fix if you have the proper equipment to do so. I can tell you I was glad to have my yellow rain gear with me!!!!!
We'll have a good day's variety of trails to offer anyone who will be wheeling Anthracite with our club during the upcoming coal mine event- less than three weeks away! Those who haven't registered and want to have a great time should get registered. This is a home game for the Keystone Cruisers!!!!!
So we picked out some blue marked trails on the lower (left side of the property heading away from the staging area) side of the park. So we decided to do the Excelsior Swamp trail even though it was already raining....... how wet could it be? Not a long trail but lots of water. We took bypasses around some of them but not all. The one where Aaron slipped into the hole was tricky. On the correct (left) line he got his front diff dug into the crown, and when he backed up it sucked him over into the hole. Crusha and I didn't see it we were in the lead and didn't know what happened until Aaron beeped his horn.
How'd we get it out? Wasn't easy. His right front was hard stuck against something under three feet of muddy water. Couldn't go forward and couldn't go backwards. We hooked up a strap to try to pull him straight forward but it wouldn't budge, all the time concerned about it going further over onto the passenger side. We ran Crusha back through a tight lane so he could pull Aaron at an angle forward and toward the driver side. Maximized our chances at success by digging some of the crown away form the front tire that was exposed, used a high lift jack for the digging and scraping! That finally worked, pulled him out of the muck and we found this:
Yes notice the front tire off the bead!His spare was a stock sized tire still hung under the back of the truck so we pulled Crusha's 35 and mounted it on Aaron's truck- gave him three 33's and a 35! Was an ugly job changing it the area was full of sticker bushes, of course it was raining and damn muddy! Damn tire with the water in it must have weighed 90 pounds! Glad I didn't try to lift it onto Crusha's swing out tire carrier..... Was glad we had a Toyota bottle jack instead of having used a high lift. After all that we drove out and headed for another trail- here's the exit of the "rescue lane" we had to use:
Then we finished that trial, and found (yes, found is the correct word!!!) the beginning of another new to us blue trail, Muddy Shackle. Thankfully, and surprisingly it turned out to be not muddy at all but a nice rock crawling trail. Out of that trail it was short jaunt to the Bucket trail, on which Aaron's frame broke (on his 62) his last trip to Anthracite. This is a very tight short trail with nice rock crawling, good technical stuff. Tight for the big 80 series trucks, running it in my 40 last time out was nice. We stopped for lunch and Crusha broke out a fleet of radio controlled cars and we had a good time playing around with them.
From there it was off to find some more blue trails in that area. We stumbled onto a trail called the BA extension which was again, a nice short trail with technical rock crawling. Tight in places. Discovered that AAOA has name my culvert trail the BA trail. We've done that several times and didn't do it yesterday but it is a favorite of mine. Then we found the EXC trail, with a short nasty hillclimb right at the beginning of it. Both 80's took a shot at it but Aaron's truck has only an Aussie locker in the rear and Crusha had only his front locker available (rear electric locker not engaging). Crusha with the use of the gas pedal in his supercharged 80 almost made it but the lack of traction on the muddy loose slope prohibited it. We drove the rest of the trail, some of it through a pine forest but the rest of it rock crawling not difficult.
from there we went over to the twister trail, my favorite trail in the whole park. It was interesting in the wet conditions. By this time it had stopped raining but the trails were of course very wet. Both guys had to use their gas pedal extensively to get up the second section of the trail. Currently there is a large rock exposed and the best (only???) viable line is over the rock with your passenger side tires. Once up to the top we were going to go down Barney Rubble but decided to try to find some of the harder trails in the are on the map marked Boyscout and SOB. The trails are not marked at all up there and we ended up trying some neat stuff, names unknown, on one of which Aaron did some further damage to his driver rear fender. We had to get the strap out again to get him up out of the chute where he was jammed. Once out of there he blasted up the hillclimb out of that trail.
That was enough for the day, it was 3 o'clock and my ass was dragging. We headed out to the staging area and aired up. Aaron cleaned the bead and rim on his wheel (still mounted conventionally on Crusha's swing out!!) and we re-seated the bead using the parks's air compressor. Popped right back on so we switched tires around again and got Aaron's back on four 33" tires. Hopefully he made it home without getting a flat!!! All in all it was a very good day, found a lot of new stuff and had a blast. Anyone reading this be aware that you should have a good correct properly inflated spare, whatever recovery gear you might need including a suitable safe jack, and preferably a winch. best to maximize your chances of getting out of an unforeseen fix if you have the proper equipment to do so. I can tell you I was glad to have my yellow rain gear with me!!!!!
We'll have a good day's variety of trails to offer anyone who will be wheeling Anthracite with our club during the upcoming coal mine event- less than three weeks away! Those who haven't registered and want to have a great time should get registered. This is a home game for the Keystone Cruisers!!!!!
- Thread starter
- #13
Stump- Crusha and I are talking about a trip to AAOA either this coming week or the following week to scout the new property. Might not get done but we're talking about it! It will be a trip during the week if it does happen. maybe Vince would like to break in his new paint job on such a run??????
Always an adventure. Thanks for having me along 
.
.
fireball
SILVER Star
I'm embarrassed to say Aaron and I were woefully unprepared in regards to recovery gear. I left all my gear in the '93 when I left the shop on Thursday. The '96 has a Warn winch, but I conveniently also left the controller at the shop . Most of Aarons gear was still in his 62 except for a snatch strap and one shackle. We were very lucky that we had a safe spot to position my truck in order to pull him out of that mud hole. It could have ended up beating a very long day trying to extricate him.
Invest in quality recovery gear and always keep it in your truck!
. Most of Aarons gear was still in his 62 except for a snatch strap and one shackle. We were very lucky that we had a safe spot to position my truck in order to pull him out of that mud hole. It could have ended up beating a very long day trying to extricate him.Invest in quality recovery gear and always keep it in your truck!
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Always an adventure. Thanks for having me along
James, I sent you the YouTube log-in, upload some of the videos you took if you have the time!
Awesome recap Gary!
Again, I must express my gratitude to these guys, jumping to assist in the rain, handing me tools before I knew I needed them, tending to equipment, lug nuts, ect... (doing most of the work to get me moving again)
Was a great day, found some great trails and had a blast!
Once on the road, the white '92 80series proved undrivable. Made it through Minersville and threw in the towel.
Brake fluid mysteriously disappeared, crazy death wobble over 35mph, bucketing rain, one wiper....
Stopped to have dinner and called AAA.
Again, I must express my gratitude to these guys, jumping to assist in the rain, handing me tools before I knew I needed them, tending to equipment, lug nuts, ect... (doing most of the work to get me moving again)
Was a great day, found some great trails and had a blast!
Once on the road, the white '92 80series proved undrivable. Made it through Minersville and threw in the towel.
Brake fluid mysteriously disappeared, crazy death wobble over 35mph, bucketing rain, one wiper....
Stopped to have dinner and called AAA.
