Trail Report: cakewalk & HD

[curtis]

Fred,Steve,Mike,Shant and Buddy,ME and three guys from SD and LA did CW & HD today. Shant is the MAN!! He did both trails with out any help! NO LOCKERS!!!! He has video's of it and for sure will be posting them. My hat off to him for some fantastic driving!!!

[flatout]

Had a great time today.Thanks Curtis for leading. I think this was the fastest I have been through these trails.Good group of drivers and lots of fun watching Shant knock down another one with out lockers.

[bullysteve]

another awesome time the weather was great ....thanks curtis for leading , art sorry you missed out !!

[curtis]

Yea it took Mike about 10 minutes to blow through Hammer Down.

[bullysteve]

how did bash do on HD

[mkjeepers]

[COLOR="Blue"]So who took the pictures? I don't see any posted!.[/COLOR]

[XJJK]

hey guys it was great wheelin with ya and collecting yet another piece of trail carnage from cougar butte found a bent drag link as soon as we hit pavement and Kevin and I messed around trying to get it straight until he had the brilliant idea to use his scissor jack under it to bend it back to a usable state. Guess that was one of the many jarring bumps I felt. I took lots of pics..
here's a few:

[4xfiend]

Awesome pics. Looks like you guys had a good time. I'm bummed I couldn't make it, but you guys picked the one sunday I couldn't go. Today was Little League day at Anaheim Stadium so I was there with my boys and my team. Got to walk on the field and watch the Angels finally win.

[GP4Play]

Great pic's.Looks to be a fun trail and was a perfect day for ya out there.

[Mike]

Great Trail and Great Day!

Hey Justin (4xfiend), I wish that you could have made it out. Cakewalk is a great trail and it would have been good to run a trail with you again.


I took some pics, but we were rolling along fairly well today so I didn't get as many as I would have liked. I did get a fair amount of video, but I will have to post it later.

We had eight rigs show up for the run. I hate to try to speak for everyone, but I am sure that we all really appeciated Curtis leading the way today!

Besides Curtis, we had Flatout (Fred), MrBash (Shant and Kevin), barney1 (Steve), XJJK (Ed) and two folks that I don't think are on the MJR forum (yet), Kevin and Yung (sp?), and myself:


We ran into some traffic entering the trailhead when we first arrived, so we skirted around them and dove into the regular trail at the V-Notch. Getting into the notch was the trickiest part, here is Curtis starting in:


Kevin entering the V-Notch:


Unfortunately, I captured the shot too late, but here is Fred pushing Yung's Toyota back down after popping a rear tire high in the air:


As Ed's pics show, there are some really cool rock formations in the area. I thought that this one was especially unusual:


All-in-all, Cakewalk's terrain looks a lot like this:


It has some extremely tight S-Turns and some very steep climbs and drops:


The longest drop off will certainly test your nerve:


I have some video of this that I will post later. Until then, I will leave you with this pic of Ed at the top of the hill to tide you over:


As a side note, and as XJJK showed in some of his pics, the flowers are really starting to bloom in the desert:


As I mentioned before, the area has some killer rock formations. Maybe I over did it on my meds, but doesn't this remind you of a Star Wars critter of some sort?:


On the way back out, we hit an obstacle that had lots of the crew getting some serious air time. Dirtman13 would have been proud! Check these out:








We had lunch at a spot where the Cakewalk Trail and the Bullfrog Trail overlapped. Since we had stopped for lunch, I caught some terrain pics:


The way out was tight in many places and covered with some tough terrain:



After Cakewalk, we headed over to Hammerdown. MrBash was up for a go and after 'every' try at the gatekeeper, he finally found the right one to get him though:


Only MrBash and I decided to try the run today. I'll post thaMrBash's run in video as well. In the meantime, here is the link to the still pics that I took:
http://s139.photobucket.com/albums/q...-09/?start=all

[XJJK]

great pics Mike! It was nice chatting with you too. I was intrigued by the quantity of trippy rock formations out there. and yeah that rock does look star wars-ish.
Thanks again for unstucking me guys- now that I look at that pic I took of Yung going through that first notch, I think I can do it if I just take a different approach.... heh heh

[curtis]

Great pictures guys and a great day.

[Mitch]

Looks like a fun day! Great pictures.

Ed:
I think we passed you guys on the right shoulder on Camp Rock Road. It looked like you were just hooking up the sway bar or something and we didn't stop. Sorry, we should have checked to see if everything was OK.

Mitch

[XJJK]

Looks like a fun day! Great pictures.

Ed:
I think we passed you guys on the right shoulder on Camp Rock Road. It looked like you were just hooking up the sway bar or something and we didn't stop. Sorry, we should have checked to see if everything was OK.

Mitch

Hey Mitch no worries... I think responsibility goes both ways - if I was screwed I shoulda flagged you down. I thought your jeep looked familiar. Thanks though.

[dirtman13]

Great pics guys. Looks like a fun trip.