Trail Report 2/21/04
It was the largest DeJA trail ride, even more participants than for the Arctic Blast. We had 21 jeeps, and picked up a few more BMJA’ers looking to join in. Winter conditions made the trail ride unpredictable but exciting. We had a range of weather also, from sun to rain to sun to clouds to heavy snowfall, all changing about every 5 minutes. It wasn’t too cold or windy, so it wasn’t too uncomfortable.
After meeting up at the Wawa, one half of us headed up to Paragon, lead by Chris (JeepSahara). The other half waited for a few latecomers, and then headed up as well for an uneventful trip. We met up with a few others up at the park. We all checked in, unloaded, disconnected, deflated, and then hit the trails.
Our whole group headed first to Rubicon Lake. We slowly filed down the main gully and joined up at the bottom (note: I went down the same gully as last time and kept all four tires on the group - it MUST have been Gavan’s fault last time). We tried a few routes up, blazing new trails through the snow. Some cruised right up, and others struggled, but we all soon made it up.
Joe then lead the stock group of 14 or so jeeps on his route, which started down Turtle to Outer Spare Tire. I’ll let someone from that group fill in the details.
I lead the modified group back down Coal Road to Valley Road. It may be an “access” road, but it was pretty challenging with the ice and snow. We met up with and passed a small group of vehicles (jeep, chevy, I don’t remember the third) going through the main obstacle on Valley. We turned off at Cherokee Ridge, which I had never run before. It’s a pretty long trail, very narrow (tough for Brian MOPARTECH’s new wide track monster jeep). Luckily it was all downhill, but it was still slow going. The few pictures I took don’t do justice to the steepness of the last hill. At the bottom, we turned right and headed towards Sleepy Hollow.
Sleepy Hollow is ordinarily pretty challenging, with large rocks to maneuver around and over. With the snow filling in between the rocks, it turned out be be fairly straightforward. One particularly tight squeeze cost Brian his driver’s side mirror, our first carnage for the trail. Other than that, we moved pretty well until the end of the trail, where it joins into Rabbit Run. There the trail takes a small rise up and across before heading down again. We were the first group through that area, so the snow was undisturbed. I took BlueJ in first, and immediately got myself into trouble. For each foot upward I drove, I slid a foot to the side, ending up pinned on my rock rail against a tree. After much struggling and sliding against the tree, my Krawlers managed to get me up the hill, although at an angle as the back end kept slipping down. I got wedged at the top of a downhill portion, against more trees, and scraped the left side as I slipped and slided down. Although it sounded bad, the damage was pretty minimal - broke my “Tread Lightly” license plate holder, bent the plate, and scraped up the vent at the back of the hard top. I probably would have taken off a tail light if I didn’t have recessed LEDs. I think I saved my rear view mirror because my rock rails held the trees just far enough at bay. On the downhill, I hit another tree, and bent and repositioned the passenger side of the front bumper. Good thing it’s getting replaced soon!
Brian tried to follow my line up, and got himself stuck as well. As we pulled him up with his winch, the rest of the crew was working out a go-around down below. We winched Brian up a the incline, and then over to the downhill. He slipped in the same places, and did similar damage to his side - license plate and tail light, no damage to his soft top.
Brian from BMJA tried to follow MOPARTECH up and got himself stuck, but we convinced him to get winched back down and do the bypass. The rest of the group cruised through the bypass and headed out to the trail exit. We then tracked back to the Spring for lunch.
After lunch, we decided to do a loop of Outer and Inner Spare Tire, before heading up Turtle to the staging area. Outer Spare Tire was pretty easy, as all of the slopes have been worn down pretty much to stock capability. We tried to play in Greg’s Mud Hole, just past the crossing, but it either disappeared or had frozen over, so we moved on to Inner Spare Tire.
At Inner, there are three drops down into the water, and two exits. All are difficult, but the midde drop down in the hardest because of a root that loves to hang onto T-case skids. After the lead jeeps took the left and right paths, I took the middle. Because of my new smooth 33 Engineering t-case skid, I slid right over the root. It caught the next few who tried to take the same route, and they had to be strapped off the root into the stream. The exits from the stream were pretty challenging, with just the worst combination of incline and ice. Greg made it up that entrance first, but pretty much everyone else had to be strapped up. I was the only exception, but I paid the price - hammering up the slope, I plowed into a dead tree that (somehow, I’m not sure how) hit my windshield and shattered it on the right side. The inner and outer layers stayed intact so no glass went anywhere, but the windshield will need to be replaced. There didn’t appear to be any damage to the frame.
Since it was getting late, we rushed the rest of the way off that trail, up Turtle, High Road, Coal Road, back to the staging area. Everyone headed up to the Exxon to re-connect and air up, and those who trailered up loaded and then headed to the Exxon as well. We did our stuff there, and then hit the road.
It was a pretty fun day, despite the trail damage. I hope Brian agrees! Everyone else in the modified group managed through without any issues. Let’s hear from the stockers!
In addition to co-Trail Leaders JoeLove (Joe Lovette) and Alesser (Andrew Lesser), here are a list of participants:
Members: Claymont-Hilbilly (Matt Edwards), DCC (Donnie Caudill), 2000Sahara (Ed Kostic), DrJ (Steve Hicks), Fly-N-Hi (Kenny George), jeepers (Greg Boyer), JeepSahara (Chris Hall), jwalk(zk215) (Jason Walker), Keith_C (Keith Cochran), MOPARTECH (Brian Casper), NikkiYJ (Nikki Sample), Orange Crush (Tom Sample), psujeep (Keith Noble), quadna71 (Chris Koran), Solomi (Sal Giglia), Xman (Vince McMahon). Passenger members included falcon (Chris Skeans), dmaster (Stetson Wallis), and weathergirl Icky (Erica Lalik).
Guests driving were FZMax (Wayne ?), James (James Orr), jeepartie (Artie DeFlaviis), and yellowTJ (Steve Dalphon).
There were also numerous passengers -- special mention to MOPARTECH’s passenger Matt who helped out with spotting and winching and lots of other stuff.