This trip was a blast!

I was only able to stay Fri-Sun, while most others stayed longer, but my girlfriend and I still had fun on this trip.

Bruce, Ryan, and I went out for a night run on friday night...that was pretty rad. I was definitely not expecting any rock crawling out there, but we managed to find some rocks to play on

The all-day run on Saturday was cool. It was a little tougher/more intense than the 2wd fireroadish trail I was expecting, but so much the better. We all got muddy on that one. Rocks, dirt, sand, mud, and snow - we saw it all.

The quick waterfall trip on Sunday morning was neat. It's nice sometimes to enjoy a trail on foot and leave the truck behind.

As always, it was nice seeing the familiar faces again and meeting new ones.

I'm waiting on some pictures from Elizabeth, but I'll post some teasers.

 

chuck,

yes, this year's dv trip was incredible. i cannot imagine what fun the guys are having right now. bummed!

but yeah, it was truly a great group and a great time for all. i cant wait to see all the other pics. ill probably post my neighbor's pics within a day or two

bob

 

lance didn't feel like getting dirty, huh?

 

Very cool! Keep the pics coming.

 

well i can understand why lance didnt want to dive in like the rest of us. his truck was pretty sharp and clean when it got here. plus, he was a good sport and always floored it to park and then take good shots of the rest of us driving through obstacles and through the mud pits.

domo, lance

oh one intersting note about the mud on my truck: i am 3rd from the farthest truck (lance) in the bottom pic. theres a 2nd truck in between mine and lance's. anyways, the first mud pit was sort of small, but thinking that it would be the only one, i paused and built some momentum and then drove right into it. lance said that when he turned around, all he saw was this HUGE tidal wave of mud engulf my 4runner it covered nearly 3/4 of the cargo box when i pressure washed it tonight

man, i wish i was back there instead of here

bob

 

no sweat, i h8 mud too

 

Hey, welcome back, guys! It was great seeing the old crew (Scott and wife, Expat, Bob, Lance, Henry) and meeting new ones (Bruce, Charles, Bob and Lance's better halves Patty and Yoko, Ryan & Steve, Ken and Audrey, Glenn and Daniella). My apologies if I forgot anyone.

I'll post up my picks in a couple days when I get 'em back. My new dig camera battery crapped out after 2 shots but luckily I had my 35mm camera.

Bob/Patty and Glenn/Daniella, many thanks for sharing your dinner with me Friday night. That was some great food!

Bruce, thanks for letting me ride with you on that night run. My first time in a real rock crawling truck. Your Runner is amazing!

Pierre

Thursday afternoon, on the road up to Mahogany Flats....
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*subscribes* wish i could have made it... next year maybe

 

pierre,

great seeing you too! sharing dinner with you was the least we could do for all your thoughtful and expert planning of this trip. as stated above, i am bummed i am back home. can't wait to do this again.

yeah, it was great meeting some new guys too. john and family. ross and his friends (though i only met brian). dfireballd and his bro, steven. ken and audrey (the nicest couple!). and calrockx's "friend", elizabeth. what you see in that guy, i dont know

so as to pre-empt anyone from mangling the true story, one of the campfire highlights on saturday night (for everyone else at least) was watching me jump out of my chair and shrieking like a girl b/c a hot ember from the fire had managed to burn a hole clear through my sweats and burn/embed itself onto my left calf. for the life of me, i didnt know what the hell that burning sensation was, but let me tell you, i felt like a dumb cartoon character for only realizing it few seconds too late

thanks to all 12 of you who laughed your asses off, and thanks to my wife who quite correctly stated "hey, i didn't help you because youre always playing jokes on me"

bob

 

Arrrghhhhh! I am so bummmed! I spent the last three days on my arse, sick in bed.... And I soooo wanted to go! I think those pix just sent me into a relapse!

Glad you guys all had fun--- But you missed my steak and shrimp fajitas that I had marinated for two days! Oh, well, next year.... sniff, sniff. :cry:

S.

 

the wind was howling pretty mad that night but after bob jumped out of his chair and did a little dance, the wind miraculously died down. now if bob could only do a rain dance to wash all the mud off our trucks, that would be awesome.

aside from that highlight moment, there were definitely many other memorable moments on this great trip. thanks to everyone who made it out for making it so. great to see some familiar faces and to meet new ones. i regret not taking monday off now that i'm back in the office typing this up but oh well. i'll get around to posting pics later tonight.

 

Last Thursday AM I left Los Angeles at 6:15AM.. 3 hrs. later, and suffering from a bout of ADD, I found myself in Ridgecrest at the Toyota dealers, sitting in a new FJ Cruiser. It was the first one I've seen so I had to stop & check it out. Another quick stop at Albertsons for food and firewood, and then it was off to Ballarat.

I passed through Trona and dropped into Panamint Valley and reached Ballarat about an hour later. The weather was beautiful and the scenery was just absolutely gorgeous, and there was no one around anywhere. I drove one of the may desolate dirt roads that paralleled the main, with the intent of heading up into the higher country atop Wildrose Canyon.

A short time later, I was standing inside one of the Charcoal Kilns near the top of Wildrose Canyon. The Kilns are an extremely well-preserved and maintained bit of technical history left over from the area’s extensive mining history. Back on the road up to Mahogany Flats I found the going muddy and snowy, with quite a bit of runoff coming down the road from all of the quickly melting snow. Once at the Mahogany Flats campground I slipped on my boots and did a bit of walking around, and made lunch. That is a beautiful campground with awesome views. There was no sign of anyone else up there, no noise, just total serenity and beautiful contrasting scenery of the nearby snow-covered mountains and far-off desertscape.

Anyway I finished exploring and photo-taking, and headed to PSR for check-in. PaddleN’Bike and Scottiac and their significant others had arrived about the same time. We had dinner, discussed which trail we wanted to do the following day, and sat around the campfire. As 10:30PM rolled around, dFireBalld and bro rolled in. I was deliriously tired from several previous nights of little sleep, and decided to call it a night.

The next day we headed out to run the Pleasant Canyon/South Park loop trail. We aired down at Ballarat and headed out on the trail, and shortly thereafter found a Range Rover riding our tail. We pulled over to let him pass and he blew by us and soon disappeared out of sight.

We stopped at a couple old mines and mining camps, honoring the motto of Take Nothing But Photos, Leave Nothing But Footprints, and continued our climb. Stopped for lunch and photo’s at another cabin well-hidden in the pine trees, and again to enjoy the jaw-dropping view of Butte Valley from from Rodgers Pass. It was dry up there and the snow was pretty much all gone. We continued on to and thru Middle Park and into South Park.

Just before dropping into the canyon at South Park, a guy in an orange Jeep, coming the other way and who just ascended from out of the canyon, pulled over and gave me a look of disbelief, and asked me in a condescending tone if we'd ever gone that way before. I wasn't in the mood, so I lied and said "yes" and rolled right past him. South Park is known as a more technical trail with little-to-no-room for error in most areas. As the trail leader and it being my first time down the trail, perhaps I did have a slight look of concern on my face!

As we dropped into a thick grove of bushes and into the steep descent of the canyon, I felt the pucker factor increase a few notches, and continued forward in a slow and relaxed pace.

Several miles into the decent, we saw the Rover that had blown by us at the start of our run. The dude had just blown out his second tire for the day and was halfway through replacing it. He had his family and parents along, like 5 people total, and all their stuff. He seemed really tense and was trying to get his tire swap finished so he could pull off the trail and let us pass before he loaded his vehicle back up. We were telling him to just take his time, we aren't in a rush, and would just assume follow him down so we don't end up holding him up again, especially since his wife said this was his third time doing this trail. He still seemed really stressed and rushed through the rest of his tire change, threw all their crap back into the Rover, and slammed the liftgate shut, shattering the rear glass on a metal suitcase that wasn't tucked back far enough. Everyone in our group was kinda shocked by this guy’s frustration level, and I started seeing this as a bad omen. I confirmed with each member of our group that no one had touched the Rover, but still, as we got back in our trucks, Scottiac had realized he lost his keys! I was in disbelief and started to believe that someone in our group had indeed touched the Rover and therefore cursed us, and I wasn't too happy that all this was happening right before our encounter with the always-dreaded Chicken Rock obstacle. We looked around a bit for the key, had no luck so he pulled out his hide-a-key, and then we continued on.

Chicken Rock is an obstacle located on a very sharp turn on a portion of the trail that is cut into the mountainside. The trail is not much wider than a truck, with the steep mountain on one side and a 200 ft. drop straight down on to the rocks below the other side. On the inside of the turn there is a large rock you have to clear, and on the outside the washed-out trail is built up with loose stacked rocks 8-10 ft. high and held together with chicken wire. When you go over it you are off-camber looking down into the canyon below. Most passengers decide they’d rather be taking pictures or doing anything else other than being in the truck while negotiating the challenge. I was the first one over Chicken Rock and did so w/o too much drama. Paddlen’bike was behind me, had a little bit of a problem with a large tablerock on the top of the rockstack. He couldn't get his front passenger tire to roll up and over it, and it kept pushing the front of his Runner to the outside atop the loose rocks. The Pucker Factor was beginning to kick into high gear as he slipped closer and closer to an unpleasant outcome , though he remained calm the entire time. With the reduced margin for error, he backed up a couple inches as dFireBalld pulled out the table rock, then he was able to proceed w/o any further drama. I will concede that I was pretty freaked when I saw his front end getting pushed to the outside, though, and I was praying that the pile of stacked rocks and chicken wire wouldn't blow out from underneath him before I could back my truck up to him and get a strap hooked up. Then it was dFireBalld’s turn. He seemed to clear it pretty quickly, but after-the-fact I realized his truck stalled (an auto tranny, too), resulting in his power steering and brakes firming up at a most inopportune moment. Last to go was Scottiac and he made it over with no drama. From there it was over the telephone pole bridge and a few more miles down the steep switchbacks and back into Ballarat where I bought a soda, made the obligatory museum donation, and aired back up.

As we rolled back into camp, we found most of the rest of the guys already finishing up their gourmet meals and setting up their camp. We sat around the campfire and chatted into the evening, and a few of us did a night run on a near-by trail. Unfortunately I had to be back in LA by noon Saturday, so I tiptoed out of camp early the next AM before everyone woke up.

It was an incredible two days of awesome weather and great scenic beauty, an awesome trail run, scores of new pinstripes and skidplate dents, and a severely out-of-whack alignment.

What few photo’s I took will be up Wednesday.

BTW, the Pleasant Canyon portion of this run being run by a couple Jeeps was on air today on 4X4TV on The Outdoor Channel, and the repeats will be on again a few more times.

 

nice write up Pierre, enjoyed reading it! I went up and down South Park at night! That was an experience. I hear that Pleasant Cyn is alot easier than last year but SouthPark is def. alot more rutted & washed out.

Did you see PotLicker at Ballarat? he's the doggie

 

Yup...he even christened my tire. His new owner was telling me how he finally got him to not jump up on people right about 30 seconds after Scottiac started playing with him and got him all riled up and bouncing all over the place and everyone .

 

I guess I need to make sure to check in the trip planning section from now on... sheesh...

 

Oh man..this was the best trip ever. So much variation in terrain and the exploration side was awesome. I got to sit in Manson's (murderer) chair and sit toasty warm in a geologist hut and chat with great people at night.

We all have heaps of photos to share during the week. I know I have close to one hundred.

I'll post up later, but this was an all time trip.

Rock crawling, mudding, waterfalls, dust and more dust, swimming pools, deserted mines to crawl into (well not me, but Lance, Johns children, Kenn and others!), warm springs, gourmet pot luck...........and of course Bob's wind dance...lol

Thanks everyone.

Mark

 

Sounds like an excellent trip guys. Please post up some more pix. Wish I could make it this year, work really cramps my style . I guess I will do a mini DV run in April with the fam, at least to get a taste.

I would like the GPS tracks and waypoints from you guys when you get a chance.

 

Steve and I just got back to SD after we ate dinner with Bruce, Ken & Audrie, Scott & Molly, and Lance & Yoko. I had an awesome time, and I definitely want to go back again and see the stuff I didn't get a chance to. Steve slept the whole way from DV while I rocked out and kept the interior like a freezer to keep myself awake

I'll post pics tomorrow when I feel like digging out my camera hookup. So many pics to post up!

 

Hey guys,

Thanks for an awesome trip. It was great to meet everyone and be able to put a face to the posts I've read online. I guess the story on my buddies being late was that their tire blew out Friday night, they stripped their lug nut wrench and had to camp by the side of the road. Then they hitched into town to call a tow truck that never showed up and eventually borrowed another wrench so they were able to get back on the road. Anyway, this trip was full of great little adventures. I especially liked the run we did on Saturday. Once I got back in the city, everyone was loving how muddy my truck was.

Thanks again. See y'all next time!

-Ross

 

I'm glad everyone had a great time! Sorry I couldn't join in the fun. DV is a great place to explore and from the sounds of it the YT crowd will be going back. Hopefully I'll be able to make it next time!

In the mean time . . . . MORE PICTURES PLEASE!!!