The Trail in BC that will remain unnamed...

Last weekend my buddy Chris and some of his friends, and myself of course, ran this part of this little trail that basically runs up a creek... without a paddle...The trail is outside of Mission, BC, off of Sylvester Rd. The name rhymes with "duct" but this is a family friendly blog, so you'll have to use your imagination.

This showroom fresh Rubicon belongs to Chris's friend, we'll call him Mr Fancypants (my wife Jennifer's idea) He probably should remain unnamed, at least until he settles things with his insurance/local dealer (more on that later) Take a good look at that Jeep, it won't be that pretty for long.....

 

  The white 4runner is mine.  I am busy making the entrance look easy so as to build up a false sense of security for Mr Fancypants.  This trail is pretty cool because it looks totally impossible, but the rocks are mostly granite and your tires stick like glue, even with snow on them.

Chris pilots this beautiful two-tone red 4runner, carefully, I might add.  He is still somewhat concerned about body damage, so he has begun to strategically add body armor, starting in the places that are already messed up. I suppose you can't blame him, he just doesn't want it to end up looking all raisened out like mine!

Just doing a little trail maintenance... I always bring my chainsaw when I go wheelin, its amazing how much I have to use it.

  Creepin' through the boulders.  Looks like my license plate is trying to jump ship.

 Chris getting high-centered on a little baby rock... Ok, its a big rock.  We got him back off of it with a little rocking and pushing on the bumpers, not a big deal.

 Here's Mr Fancypants starting his line around the little baby rock.   Little does he know this is just the beginning of a long, very bad day for him and his Rubicon....

I think what happened here was the right rear tire started climbing the little baby rock, then got caught on it, as it slid off, peeling about six inches of the rim open like a can opener!  Nanoseconds later, the "slider" got bent straight down, and the door got smashed!  Awesome!! (sorry, Mr Fancypants)

You'll notice the strap attached to Chris's bumper.  It is attached on the other end to Mr Fancypants' Rubicon.  about 30 feet after the rim peeling incident, he somehow managed to break his right rear axle shaft. (and, we found out later, he grenaded the rear locker as well) So, now, in three wheel drive, he was needing a little help.

 Somewhere around this little hill, which was the exit out of the creekbed, Fancypants got his front diff lodged on a rock and literally spit the right front U joint out on the ground!  Now he had "left wheel drive" only, and that was if we felt it was a good idea to try and power through all the shattered pieces of his drivetrain.  We didn't really feel like that was a good idea, so we relied on winching, double line winching, strapping, winching with Chris's winch, etc etc.  This went on for about 4 days.  Not really, but it took us about 3 hours to go the last quarter mile with this strategy. 

 You can see above the tracks that I left for Chris.  I hit this hill with a lot of skinny pedal and made it without winching, but Chris now had Mr Fancypants in tow, so he didn't have a chance.  He put his new Costco winch to the test, and although it moved cable at glacial speeds it never let him down!  By the way, Fancypants had a brand new Warn 9.5ti that got worked pretty hard, too, and took it like a champ. Except for one time that somebody let too much cable unspool and it ripped off of the drum.... At some point I jumped into Chris's truck to do a little driving while he helped with winchlines, and "apparently" I bent one of his wheels.  I think it was already like that, but it was losing air pretty fast, and it was right after I drove it.... so.... sorry Chris!  He whacked it with a hammer a few times and sealed it back up, though, so its all good.  Besides a little body rash on that LF fender, this wheel was actually the worst thing that happened to Chris's 4Runner, and it wasn't even his fault!!

So, finally (you'll notice its dark now) we made it out to the road, where we stood around, checked out the carnage, and called for a flatbed to haul the wounded Jeep home.  He did have to drive it a few miles to get down to paved roads, and the right rear wheel was wobbling pretty good by then, what with the broken axle and all.  He even managed to break off part of the brake caliper bracket in the process. 

So I though you would all be excited to hear a woman's thoughts on this day of wheelin'.  First and foremost, it was pretty awesome.  I haven't been wheelin in a while due to having little babies and I didn't get to go on Ultimate Adventure with Paul since someone had to watch those babies for 2 weeks!  So I was pretty excited.  This trail was probably the hardest trail I have ever been on, and it was all granite rocks going up this creekbed, so we spent all day standing in a creek in December, half the time it was raining too.  It was freezing, but worth it, big rocks, tight turns, water, some mud slingin' at the end, it covered everything.  There is no way you are going to make it out of this trail unscathed.  Which is the way it should be, I think.  I'm a bit of a backwoods girl, and I love to see some carnage!  With all the breakage on the Rubicon, the best part was Mr Fancypants never flipped out, just stayed a cool guy and accepted his fate.  Which is the way it should be, if you're going wheelin, man up and get ready to break something, or go drive around in a field somewhere, get a little mud on your truck and tell everyone you went "wheelin" and stay off the real trails.  Our 4Runner had some new dents in it's dents by the time we left and my hubby forgot to tell you that he sliced an almost new tire doing donuts in the gravel pit before we even started, so there ya go, we accomplished something.  If you think your truck can hack it, this trail is definitely worth  checking out.  Although, I am still hearing "WINCH OUT!"  "WINCH IN!" (from the 3 hour winchathon) in my sleep, so you might take that into consideration...          Jennifer