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Deer Valley Sep06 Moab Aug06
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Hollister Hills - January 2006 |
We all gathered at the Ranger Station around 9:30.
We had a pretty good turnout with two H1's, three H2's, and
six H3's show up. Once everyone
arrived and said their hellos, the 2's and 3's aired down and we headed up to the obstacle course.
We staged at the big open area at the obstacle course for some group photos and
to go over some safety info. After a quick briefing, everyone broke up and
starting hitting the obstacles. It must really wet and muddy so some of the
obstacles, like the mud pit and frame twister, were in pretty bad shape.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before someone got in some trouble. One of the H1's
got stuck in the log portion of Frametwister. He managed to get himself lodged
in pretty good and while trying to power his way out, blow out something in his
driveline. When a 9000lb. truck gets stuck, it takes a whole lot to get it
unstuck. After several attempts it took the other H1, an H2, an H3, and the
stuck H1's winch to pull it free. In the process, the other H1 also suffered a
driveline issue.
While all of this was going on, one the other H2's suffered a power steering
failure. So less than 45 minutes into the trip, we had lost three trucks. Not a
good start. We towed the first H1 down to the main gate to meet up with the tow
truck and a small group went into town to see if they could find parts to fix
the other two trucks. One of the H3's followed the H1 driver being towed so we
ended up losing another truck.
So while we waited for the parts expedition to return, I led a small group up to
the quarry. We played around in the quarry for a little bit, took some great
posed shots, and then headed back down to the obstacle course. Still no sign of
the parts hunters so I led two other H3's over to look at the famous Tank Traps
trail and then loop back around to the obstacle course.
With all the wet weather, I figured there would be some pretty good mud back
there but I had no idea how bad it would be. Coming around the bottom of
Foothill Road we hit a really muddy section. We managed to get through this pretty
easily with just a little slipping and sliding. The trail then goes up a small
hill with a little hump that was really tore up and very slick. I took a couple
runs at it and finally made it up. I parked a ways up the trail and walked back
to help the other two. The next truck took several runs and finally got over the
hump, only to get turned sideways. We weren't able to get him turned back in the
right direction and none of us had winches. The trail was too slick to try to
strap him out so we managed to get him turned around and head back the way we
came. I walked back up to my truck and headed up the trail to turn around.
Wouldn't you know it, I was less than 100 yards from the end of trail where it
was almost completely dry. And posted at the trailhead was a big sign that read
"Not passable when wet". Oh well.
I went back down the trail to catch up with the other two and ran into another
problem. The third H3 was stuck in some ruts and couldn't get turned around.
With a little pushing we were able to get him out of the ruts and turned around.
The three of us headed back up to the obstacle course to meet up with everyone
else.
The "parts hunters" finally showed back up and the remaining trucks drove up to
the top of McCray Road. After taking in the view and snapping some pics we
headed back down the hill and over to Five Fingers Hill Climb. Once we all made
it up the hill a couple of the guys decided to drive back down Five
Fingers. The rest of us chose to drive around the back and we all met up at Sycamore
Camp. With the sunlight fading we had just enough time to make our way over to
the ravine. With all the recent rain, the ravine was pretty deep and washed out.
We led the SoCal trucks through the trail and had them pose for some great
wheelie shots.
We were running out of daylight so we all headed back down to the ranger station
to air back up. When we got there, we ran into one of the H2's that had
separated from us earlier. He had been having problems with his transmission and
it finally went out on him. So the final
tally was an H1 and H2 being towed, and another H1 and H2 limping home. Despite
all the early troubles, for those of us with running trucks, it turned out to be
a pretty good trip. And our SoCal friends are now fans of Hollister.Related info:
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