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fjamming previously said:
Is there going to be a little "oops" report?
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Yes there will:
Heading home from the Calico Cleanup, my brother Paul in his 4runner (4rnr-paul), and my copilot Alejandro (fjsoto) decided to run Cleghorn as an easy day-ending wind down. Everything was great until we got to the one really tough rock crawling section (if you've run it, you know which part I mean, it's the only truly rough section on the trail). We did fine over the boulders, scraped the side of the truck slightly on the mud wall at one point.
Then we got near the crest and there was snow. We tried running it since there was a clear edge on one side, but the thing that got us was that the snow was melting and it was like October 1941 in Russia: nasty ass mud. We got stuck bad. Tried lockers front and back. Nope. Tried the winch and found that my winch motor had burned out at some point - no pull. Tried digging: Nothing. Pulled down the sand ladders: Nope. Eventually we did manage to get the truck to reverse out of the wheel pits! Yeah! Time to put the sand ladders back on the roof (we're like 1 hour since we first got stuck now). As we get the tool box out of the truck, the vehicle starts to slide on the liquified Russian steppe and Alejandro was lucky not to get trapped under the vehicle and run over. The FJC slides like 20 ft down the 30 degree slope (with hand brake full on and vehicle not running). It then wedges in the trail and stops. We say "to hell" with the sand ladder and after ascertaining vehicle security, continue the reverse down till we get to a nearly flat surface. At that point we 5 point turn and we're ready to head down. I actually hiked back up to where the ladder was and brought it back (couldn't bare to leave it!).
First stuck (still daylight):
First use of ladders (surface looks flat in photo's cause of lack of reference, but it's really a 30 deg slope: navigating around the truck was a pain):
Somewhat secure on the sort of flat area - turn around point:
OK - so now we're heading down the mountain, feeling pretty good that we figured out how to get unstuck. We get down to where the nasty boulders are, and try to make it off to the bypass on the left. No luck. The ridge that separates the main path from the bypass defeats us. We get pushed up to such a crazy roll angle, that we freak out and turn back into the main path trough. Not so bad: we'll just have to get over the boulders. We make it down about two sets when with wheels slightly turned we come to a point with two boulders. The weight of the vehicle combined with the slight turn onto the boulders (the slope is like 20 degrees down hill) pushed the turn to full left lock and we're wedged up against the boulders. Stuck again bad.
We try to hilift the vehicle over the rock with the rock rail adaptor. Nope. We try to use the wheel spoke adaptor: Nope again. We run into all the stupid hilift mechanism problems - we have to whack the hilift with a mallet at the top and bottom of each stroke to get the pins to engage. We try to deflate the tire to get clearance, but the weight of the vehicle on the slope pushes and closes up the gap. We call to see if Paul can pull us out, but then a guy in a Tacoma with lockers comes by. He's able to pull us about 6 inches up slope, which is enough for me to get the wheels pointing down hill, and we're free! All the way down to the fire road! Whoo-hoo!
On the fire road, we need to re-inflate the tire. I didn't bring my CO2 tank, so we used the under-the-hood compressor. In my exuberance, I mananged to pull the regulator off the tube. We had to cut the line, and to get it warm enough to fit back over the inlet, we used my brother's cigarette lighter, warm the plastic up and then slide it on. Very nice. Tire back up to full pressure.
Driving back to the road, we found that the truck was making a horrible clanking sound. I think my CV axle on the front driver's side is broken. It's now back at MAF. For sure, my CV boots on both sides are "tored-up." Yup, that kinda summarizes it: "I tored that truck up!"
Winch cable wrapped on ARB:
Can see rock rash and hilift rash on front left fender flare:
Torn boots:
