Trip report- Member Appreciation Ride @ AOAA 5/19/2018

  • This was the annual Member Appreciation Ride, held for the first time at AOAA. In spite of the wet weather, we had a pretty good turnout with only a few no-shows. I didn't take a firm headcount, but I believe we had 18 folks at dinner. We broke up into 2 groups, with me leading the blue/black group and the 40" crew doing their own thing. I believe our group was myself, @nutrijeeper and @TheDarkSide in the XJ, @baldchris, @Buster Stewart, @meeper, @Stafford, @YJDave, @Down Hill Roller, @Captain and @Captain II in the TJ, and @Stomper taking tailgunner duty. @astape, @JKgray10 and @Solomi (welcome back!) did the hard stuff after the heavy rain stopped.


    For our group, the loose idea was to head to the eastern corner and run the long blue Whiskey Ridge trail. On the way, started off on the blue hill climb close to the parking lot. I made it through it before realizing I never disconnected my swaybar. ;) A few access trails later, I saw a black trail and asked the collective mind on the CB if we wanted to try it. I wish they named their hard trails... it's to the left of "Boyscout" on the map. After starting the trail, we saw a sign indicating a "double black" difficulty and YJDave opted to find us at the end of the trail. It starts off as a steep, loose and partially offcamber downhill into a large rock field. Definately a hard black trail. I was only on 32" tires, so I got myself high-centered once and winched free. There were a lot of tight spots that required spotting, and a few trees were "contacted". 3/4 of the way through the trail, we met a group of 3 Jeeps coming against us... a locked JK and two open/open XJs. While attempting to move through the trail to move out of our way, it turned into an hour-long ordeal and winching to get one XJ through a tight spot and turned around as we recommended they not attempt the harder sections that we'd already come through. Sadly, this meant that YJDave was waiting for 2 hours, but I think he found some blues to play around on while he waited. After meeting back up, we broke down for lunch. After lunch, I tried leading our group to pick up the nearby Whisky Ridge trail, but mapping and trail signage (ie, lack of) caused us to loop off the map and back around. This burned a little too much time for me, as I needed to break off the group to pick up our dinner. The group attempted to find the trail again after I left, but again had issues with the mapping and suffered two breakages... Hopefully one of them can elaborate on that.


    Dinner was 2 large catering trays of fried chicken, ribs, corn, mac&cheese and green beans by the campfire. We had, I believe 6 campsites in a row, with plenty of parking room. The group took over JKGray and astapes campsite for dinner and campfire until after midnight. Since we had no-shows, we had plenty for seconds and then more chicken around 11pm over the fire.


    I left my phone in the Jeep everytime I got out to spot, so sadly have no photos... hopefully others got some good shots. :)

  • We had a few breaks for sure,


    Someone broke a rear SYE output shaft yoke before even getting on a trailer (you know who you are LOL)
    YJDave blew his alternator belt
    Another YJ broke stock rear output slip yoke, same hill
    Sunday Andy broke left front u-joint on same hill yet again, he ended up taking a green to the end of our trail, we met up with him and his whole steering knuckle was separated from the ball joints, we quickly jacked it up and popped it back together and made it back to camp safely.
    Astape broke spindles for rear cantilever suspension


    When we met up with Andy on this really muddy hill Matt and myself are the only ones that made it up, we had to winch an XJ and Stafford (out of safety, he got crossed up at the top)

  • We had a few breaks for sure,


    Someone broke a rear SYE output shaft yoke before even getting on a trailer (you know who you are LOL)


    <whistles innocently>


    Yeah, there was a large amount of damage this trip. Odd since we weren't really wheeling that hard of trails. I dunno, sometimes it just happens that way.

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