ChefYota4x4

iTrader: (5)

I thought I'd upload these to this thread...

I had a great trip with Redeth005 and JonnyBoy , Angeles Crest, where we camped at Sycamore Flats and wind up on Saturday with 8 Yota's and a SICKLY modified Bronco 2! A bit of carnage that day as we lost one guy completely, John and his son in a 92 extra cab to a blown out clutch... And Zack, zip 26 , who won the blowing out both ball joints on 1 side of his sick T100. But all in all it was a good time and I really enjoyed hanging out with everyone.

Just leaving my house,... You can see why someone would want to get the hell out of here once in awhile! Very grateful to live where I do, but sometimes its a bit overwhelming to have trouble going 15 miles and sometimes over 1 hour...


Heading out by the way, finally, I hit the 14 and I was surprised to find my truck doing 70 miles an hour, in 5th gear, on a over 50 percent grade...




Finally got 2 the 138 Highway, over the past, and stopped in and had a kick ass lunch at Charlie Browns! Handmade quarter pound beef sausage Ruben dog with sauerkraut and Swiss on a KILLER brioche Bun, seasoned fries and a double chocolate banana shake... I highly recommend anyone heading through the Antelope Valley, Little Rock and pear blossom in particular, to stop at this place and check it out. Its a lot of fun. Huge candy selection including sugar free, local made jams and honeys and even their own winery... Great food including tons of jerky and sausage from local meat purveyors that does game and so forth... Around 100 flavors of milkshake including their famous Date Shakes.... Chocolatier, huge novelty section what times of collectibles, lots of artwork including indoor and outdoor... And just generally really cool people that treat you well! .....



Headed up into the mountains to set up camp, waiting for JonnyBoy....




CLOSERRRR....



CLOSERRRRRRRR....



Stop at the ranger station just passed the aqueduct and then post office, and you can fill up your 7 gal and water container like I did, just miles before the camp, instead of carrying that 60 pounds around. (Valyermo Ranger Station for reference) ....



I initially past Sycamore Flats campground, which surprisingly was empty...( I guess when its 30 degrees at night or colder, the morons stay away, along with the bugs... Which is a good thing! Lol. ) .... About 100 yards past that camp I made a right up in the South Fork campground.... It's a beautiful somewhat secluded camp that is still on the run a mile and a half of the road...







Off to the right about 5 degrees you can see a crag at the bottom of the tall pine tree line, that is where the camp is. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures up there because I was too busy trying to get ahold of them on the phone , to see which camp they probably would prefer. Unbelievably for about 2 minutes I got reception and got through to them.... They both message to me suggesting it might be better with some of the issues they were concerned about, camping closer to the road, rather than going up the dirt road... I obliged as the Dude would, set up camp and within one hour it was pitch black. Luckily I had some wood so I set up a fire, flipped on the rock lights, set up my bed and got the food out to make dinner when Johnny arrived...





This next picture is from Saturday night after Richard and Faby had crashed out.... I couldn't believe how freaking incredible the sky was... Johnny and I must've seen about 10 shooting stars in the last 20 minutes that we checked it out....



Slept well and the next morning I got up first around 7 a.m. to a beautiful day...




We had a killer breakfast and as we finished up and prepped the rigs for a day of Wheeling, Richard, Ruben, Julio and Richards coworker, John, showed up in there trucks 2 wheel. Richard and Fabi staying to camp.....






We headed off down the road to meet up with Zach(zd526), 2 of his buddies in a sick Bronco 2 with tons of modifications, John and his son(NoXo 92 ?? I will correct it when I get it right , lol.), for a total of nine trucks....


Meeting up.....



Group pic and some miscellaneous portraits....

Lf to Rt....: Richard, Ruben, Myself, Jonny, John and Julio....



Faby...



Richard and Faby....



JONNYBOY....



Julio...



All nine trucks at the top of the first testing hill, lined up and ready to roll...







Some video of Wheeling up that first hill...



On the second Hill, I led and then the 5th Gen 4runner, John, wind up a little sidetracked so I pulled him up over the hill....






We then Headed up a dry narrow creek bed that would have made such good pictures... But I didn't get any video going up it. Just a little at the end before we stopped for a minute , waiting on the news about John....










Ruben(85 Beast) and Julio (86 Stock) coming up that turn....









Stopped at a clearing at the top of the creek bed to have some drinks and snacks and wait to hear the news... John had blown his clutch! Bummer!



I then took off to scout a little bit and 1 up I really nasty narrow hill that had pretty nasty valleys on either side, and in the third picture you can see down in there a bit... Just to the right, way down below, that's where everyone was still parked...







I did not think it was a very good idea for everyone to try and get up this... So, I took off back to the group and we decided to press on a little further east to another set of hills that didn't have such a drop off... However, they were pretty extreme at spots... Especially at the top. Around a hundred feet from the top, Zach (zd426) pretty much just blew up the upper ball joint on the passenger side. Well, I shouldn't say he blew it up, it just completely failed. BUMMER#2! I had already gone ahead a little bit to see which way to go... When I got the call on the radio. I turn around and pulled to the top and when I realized how steep it was toward the top, I knew my only way to get him up was with the winch. However, not really wasn't going to work because his front end was completely toe in on the right side around 6 inches past the driver side... Either way, it wasn't going anywhere, and probably the worst idea would have been to pull him up further... So, his buddy James got to doing some crazy scary hillside / hi lift / horrible angle ball joint ratchet strap repair, just to get him down the hill.


As this was unfolding I called and found an upper ball joint at CARQUEST Auto Parts in Palmdale. JonnyBoy took off on around the 30 minute drive to go pick it up... James strap repair to pull the ball joint back in to the socket worked at least to get him down to a little bit more level ground. He couldn't get quite out of the road so I squeezed by him after cruising down the hill with Fabylous in the passenger seat.... I think by this time she was just a little north of freezing her ass off! ...... I still had shorts on. Lol


After I got around him, and pulled up... We set there for a little bit, basically waiting for JonnyBoy. ... Who turned up pretty much around five minutes later... Very cool of you to roll out and do that, Jonny!....





From there we just played around a little bit in a decent Trench....









I believe I got something stuck in my wheel well! lol.....



Yes,..... That's me! Haha.....

Redeth005/Richard (and his lovely lady, Faby)...









JonnyBoy. ....









As the ball joint got installed they had already planned on just getting it to the road to have it towed back... Johnny had already been to town so he knew the quickest route back to the road. Richard, his co worker John and myself all took off the other direction back towards the more difficult stuff...






Write about here... Above, I stopped, as I had just gotten another call over the radio that his lower ball joint heading out busted completely out of the socket! ... Ughhh! Poor Zach! And James of course, lol...

I couldn't go another foot without eating something, so we made some kick ass sandwiches with some fresh bakery squaw bread I brought and deli roast beef and turkey... Good stuff! We then headed back and lit up the trail repair for Zack and James, while we waited for there buddy to get back in the Bronco with the lower ball joint.....





Just the side lights at this point...



Faby fweezin her toosh off!....



The ball joint carnage... Look at this thing!




So at this point, we all split up and Johnny boy, Richard and Faby and myself , after Johnny search for a little bit on the phone, decided on BJ's for dinner... We were just too tired and cold to go back and set up the grill and stove and everything else at 10 o'clock at night...

There is video of that... But its on Instagram. I suppose I could get it from Faby,.... But meh. Lol... Just going Instagram and look up... #youfixitevenifitsonauphill ...... Hahaha. Great hashtag! I will be totally shocked if there is another one besides that video tagged! Lol.

We headed back to camp and just chatted a bit and johnny got right on tweaking his front end after some scary death wobble on the road......

Here is Johnny explaining to Richard how and why he's probably having these trippy issues with the steering and so forth... Keep in mind, it is no more than 30 degrees out at that point... Richard crashed very shortly after... John and I did as well but I decided I should take a couple pictures of the stars because they were so incredible!!! I guess the hashtag here would be #googgawdilovemycanonD! Lol....



I know that's a double post of that picture, but RIGHT???????^^^^^^^^ must have been at least five to ten shooting stars in those 20 minutes. Awesome sauce! Lol.

We all crashed out and at one point, when Johnny was done messing with his truck, you very kindly kaptest tools out and adjusted my steering back to toe in because I was toe out on both sides! I hit a ditch pretty freaking hard at one point. Eek! Hahaha....

After this, and doing some packing up, we all agreed that we should get in some wheeling before this day was through... So we headed up 2 the further east side of the backside of the Angeles Crest, which was basically a right turn at the bottom of the road from camp. Jackson Lake direction we drove... As we passed the frozen lake I snapped a shot... I can't believe this actually came out! Hehe....



We then, at one point, turn around and came back to a turn off that Jonny found on the ipad and dat was our wheeling for the day...... Here....( feel free to watch only the shorter videos, etc. I have not finished editing my Windows Live Movie Maker, as I'm dealing with a bit of pain and still very busy... I think it's still better than watching fail compilation videos over and over and over again... But then I was there, so I understand some people get bored. It's just that I have a huge memory card in this phone, and everytime I turn the damn video of something really cool happens where I can actually turn it back on.).....


At around 6 minutes 30 seconds in this next video, we actually do a little hill climb... The trust me this thing is steeper than it looks here.....




Faby Rollin the Kingsford!.....




More short fun ones that Jonny got...































And that did it for our wheeling of the day... So we headed back to camp... To break down and head home! .....

At Camp, I busted out some jumbo shrimp and cocktail sauce, while Richard made us an excellent Hawaiian style barbecue carne asada dinner! GRUB! Man do I enjoy not having to cook! Thanks again, Richard!

That concludes our trip to the Angeles Crest National Forest. There are ups and downs to every area, but I still have to say that after 30 years of coming up here, while it has gone downhill in regards to freedom of roaming... Is still a beautiful place right in our backyard of Los Angeles!

I hope to get another trip together very soon with a little bit more planning as to where we wheel.... And most definitely some camping involved again. Everyone who came was appreciated and I enjoyed everyone's company!

I'm desperately trying to get a plan together for KOH, and I'm hoping that more than a few people will show up at Tierra del Sol! KOH starts on the 31st and goes thru the 8th. Hopefully we can find a couple of days where at least a few people can show up??????? I will try to post some detailed thread for a roll call very soon.

Very great way to kick off the new year!