Winter 1995-96

The first trip of the locked up jeep was back up to Lake Cavinagh. We met up with a gaggle of people in Arlington. I think it was around late Feburary or March sometime but it was raining.

Oh! I almost forgot. It must have been just before this but I finally put wipers back on the jeep. I went to a junk yard and picked up the motor from a Fiat, and made my own custom linkages and wiper arms. Now both wipers go at the same time and even park!

Anyway, back to the story. I think there were about 9 or 10 vehicles including Lee Hart who was another e-mail person we had been talking back and forth to. John brought along some of his friends which included a lifted Toyota pickup which I knew I had seen somewhere before. Ya, it was at the last Poker run at Evans Creek when I clogged my radiator in the big mud hole. This guy was driving in and out of that mud hole but he did have way bigger tires than me.

We lined up and drove off to the trail head, back to Flatfender gap. Well, this time the flatfender didn't squeeze through like it usually did. The whole thing was washed out even more than before and everyone was having problems getting up. We ended up winching a few people up the gap. I made it up after a couple of tries but there was no way I could have made it without the locker in the back.

The first part of the trail was pretty much like before and nothing major happened. Well, something minor happened though. I sort of got caught on a rock, well, my exhaust pipe did and I kept going and I sort of pulled my muffler back about 3 inches. I'm suprised I didn't do this before the way my exhaust is hanging outside the frame. I really need to re-route that inside the frame.

Don was leading and tried to go the way we went before but things were washed out differently. Don tried going through a little but got his jeep up sideways pretty good (Tyler didn't like that) and backed out. We took a little different way that wasn't so impossible. But the Toyota pickup went down the hard way anyway and payed the price with a banged up door.

We continued on to the bottom through a little side hill trench which I managed to screw up just enough to have a branch slice a 4" hole through my door. Oh well, adds character.

And that was about it. We drove around a couple other little trails and then headed home. This trail is something that changes every time we go up to it so it's always fun and challenging. The only drawback is that it's sort of short.