Woodpecker this weekend (8-30)

[goodtimes]

A few of us from the phoenix and tucson area are getting together this weekend to run woodpecker (about 60 miles due north of tucson--in the general Florence Junction area).

The trail is difficult by most peoples standards (including mine), and has some "extream" obsticals along the way (fire hole, devils back, V-notch, etc., ---all of the really extream stuff has bypasses).

If anyone is interested, let me know.....

[sarah]

rick is in tuscon right now, but he's leaving tomorrow. i'll relay the message to him, he's been trying to get a few of the guys from work to join the forum. have a rockin' time!

[goodtimes]

Slight change in plans if there are any lurkers thinking about joining us. We are runner upper (and possibly upper-upper) Ajax. Minimum of DEEP gears, pair of hard lockers, and 33's recommended (we'll see how well I do with 31's). So far there are only 3 people going.....me, an FJ-40 on 35's, and a flat-bed toyota with dana 44's and 38's.

Meeting time is 6:30 am at the flagpole on cottonwood canyon rd., just south of Florence junction.

[NAILER341]

post some pictures and a trail report of this run... sounds interesting! wish i could be there

[goodtimes]

Some pics from todays run are here. The server is not very stable right now, I still haven't been able to get through them.

Anyway, we ran upper ajax, then played around at the bottom of lower woodpecker for a while, BS'd with some of the TTORA guys that showed up to run lower woodpecker and lower ajax....then we headed home about noon.

Upper Ajax starts where lower ajax ends...it is the same wash, it just gets much tougher at that point. It was a short run (we did it in about 1.5 hours--3 vehicles, all locked at each end, one on 38.5's with 227:1 gearing, one on 35" MTR's with 62:1, and me with my little 31's and 66:1). There are 8 main obsticals, all are pretty tough....everyone had to lock up both ends on every obstical. I had a few problems with the low hanging belly pan, but we managed to get me through it with few problems. The worst was when I missed my line by about a foot gonig up a V-notch sorta thing. There were 2 boulders I wanted my left tires on, but I missed them because of the sun in my eyes---I should have stopped and verified I was where I thought I was, but I didn't. I came down HARD on my drivers side slider, we threw a couple of rocks down, and I was able to drive up the obstical after a few minutes.

The trail is rated at 4.5 (1 - 5 scale)...but I from what I understand, there has been alot of rock stacking in there, not enough rock un-stacking, and the sediment is filling everything in, making it easier than it used to be. It is still a tough run, and there are a couple of spots that (if you don't bypass them) you will need to be locked in both ends. Not all obsticals have bypasses. This is not a trail for beginners unless your rig is set up pretty well and you have a good spotter with you.

It was a great summer run though. We were off of the hard part (upper ajax) by 9:00am, before it got too hot. I'll be doing that one again sometime.

[Dukes69]

ROCKS!!!! YAY!:yay: We'll have to come out and visit you sometime so we can play on AZ's BFR's too