I organized this run as a trail maintenance run for my club, OC 4Play..the trail being our Adopted Trail White Mountain. For our club we had an amazing turnout, 11 rigs. Paul from MJR made it out and was a great guest. He charges hard and doesn't look back. Hell of a nice guy too We got there Friday afternoon and setup camp. Not enough takers to do a night run so we left camp around 9:45 Saturday morning and made our way towards White Mountain.
This was my first time on the trail. 4 or so interesting hill climbs. Cal 3 Wheel prgressively gets steeper with some mountain rock on the left and loose dirt on the right. I made it up with 2 wheels on the ground Suicide Hill is after that, which I passed on as the girlfriend was pretty shaken up from C3W, and honestly I wasn't too amped to climb that hill either We then hit 1/2 mile hill, which was pretty damned long, with a few smallish rock obstacles on the way up. Muddy Hill followed, which was very dry, but a perfect flex test hill and would be hell when it was muddy. Frustration was the last major obstacle. The bypass is pretty tough too, and the stock TJ, a mostly stock Amigo, and an open YJ with 33's got towed up. Frustration has a few lines you can choose, and a lot of it you can't see too well from the bottom. A real nice choice of rocks/lines, a lot of loose dirt, and then another choice of a 10' rock climb up at the top.
After White Mountain we headed to Holcomb and assaulted that trail. The bolt holding the heim on my drag link to the pitman arm dropped out, which could have really ruined a day but i managed to stop before getting much farther over the edge In the rock garden i somehow managed to crush and crack the banjo bolt on a front brake line. i closed off the line with some vice grips and we were off. On the smooth rocks towards the end a few guys tried climbing the vertical faces. Paul took a good try at it and made it up a section, an XJ tried a little more vertical section but got caught on his tow hitch, and crazy old Cal in a Suzuki on 35's/44/9" came really close to either making it up the most vertical section, or flopping on his back. Paul and Frank managed to bring him back to terra firma. We all sailed through the last section of rocks and made it back to 3n16 and then headed back to camp.
I tried JB welding the banjo bolt overnight but it still leaked so i left the vice grip on, put a better bolt with a nylock nut on the pitman arm donated by Paul, and left Sunday morning. Paul and the rest of the group took off for Gold Mountain, and hopefully he'll fill you in on that part of the trip.
Despite some bitching by my club members for showing up later then I said I would (gotta have a running jeep!) and leaving sooooo late in the morning on Saturday, it was a great time and I'm looking forward to doing it again. Hopefully we'll get more of you to come out. I'll be planning a Los Coyotes run after I get back from the Rubicon late in August, and probably one more Big Bear trip, maybe a single overnighter, as some last minute practice for the Con. That trip will be a lot of rock crawling...back and forth in the different gardens.
This was my first time on the trail. 4 or so interesting hill climbs. Cal 3 Wheel prgressively gets steeper with some mountain rock on the left and loose dirt on the right. I made it up with 2 wheels on the ground Suicide Hill is after that, which I passed on as the girlfriend was pretty shaken up from C3W, and honestly I wasn't too amped to climb that hill either We then hit 1/2 mile hill, which was pretty damned long, with a few smallish rock obstacles on the way up. Muddy Hill followed, which was very dry, but a perfect flex test hill and would be hell when it was muddy. Frustration was the last major obstacle. The bypass is pretty tough too, and the stock TJ, a mostly stock Amigo, and an open YJ with 33's got towed up. Frustration has a few lines you can choose, and a lot of it you can't see too well from the bottom. A real nice choice of rocks/lines, a lot of loose dirt, and then another choice of a 10' rock climb up at the top.
After White Mountain we headed to Holcomb and assaulted that trail. The bolt holding the heim on my drag link to the pitman arm dropped out, which could have really ruined a day but i managed to stop before getting much farther over the edge In the rock garden i somehow managed to crush and crack the banjo bolt on a front brake line. i closed off the line with some vice grips and we were off. On the smooth rocks towards the end a few guys tried climbing the vertical faces. Paul took a good try at it and made it up a section, an XJ tried a little more vertical section but got caught on his tow hitch, and crazy old Cal in a Suzuki on 35's/44/9" came really close to either making it up the most vertical section, or flopping on his back. Paul and Frank managed to bring him back to terra firma. We all sailed through the last section of rocks and made it back to 3n16 and then headed back to camp.
I tried JB welding the banjo bolt overnight but it still leaked so i left the vice grip on, put a better bolt with a nylock nut on the pitman arm donated by Paul, and left Sunday morning. Paul and the rest of the group took off for Gold Mountain, and hopefully he'll fill you in on that part of the trip.
Despite some bitching by my club members for showing up later then I said I would (gotta have a running jeep!) and leaving sooooo late in the morning on Saturday, it was a great time and I'm looking forward to doing it again. Hopefully we'll get more of you to come out. I'll be planning a Los Coyotes run after I get back from the Rubicon late in August, and probably one more Big Bear trip, maybe a single overnighter, as some last minute practice for the Con. That trip will be a lot of rock crawling...back and forth in the different gardens.
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