YotaTech Forums - Locos Mocos NV 2005

To say this trip was fun is an understatement........

Day 1

Meet up with the Total Chaos crew Wednsday evening and head north on 395, camped in Bishop overnight. (the only night the tents were used)

Day 2

Fished in many different creeks on the way up, but the bite was very weak, just seemed the weather wasn't with us, hit some patches of rain, but as we ventured into Nevada it got worse. Stayed at one of the Casinos in Fallon where I won about $60.... Met up with the NorCal crew and there was a total of 14 vehicles that showed up, even though it was down pouring. I was fully expecting this trip to be a wash, but was assured that we'd be able to run it.

Day 3

Since we didn't follow the original plan and run the first leg of 40 miles the night before, we took the highway to Arterial Canyon. some of the ruts were pretty nasty and we traveled and a mild pace. At one point I decided to straddle one of them and almost ended up rolling my rig over. The right rear slid off and pitched my 4Runner sideways, caught the rut hard and flipped me onto 2 wheels, I was lucky my e-locker was on, turned into the roll, gassed it and came back on all 4's. The first carnage was when one of the trucks broke a steering linkage, after about an hour of replacing it we were on our way. The rest of the day went incident free, well almost. Stopped off in Middlegate, to toss a pair of sneakers onto “The Shoe Tree”. Then headed out to, Ione, Berlin/Ichthyosaur, we surprised the Ranger there since they didn't expect to see so many vehicles show up in the middle of rain/snow, he had a fun time giving us the full tour. Heading out towards Austin there was some heavy snow comming down and one of the 4Runners slid off the road. I had to use my winch to pull him out. Got a room on Austin and hit the bar across the street, no hot springs :(

Day 4

Everything started out just fine, but slowly got worse, there was no rain, just a few sprinkles. The mud got real nasty and there was a 4 mile section that took nearly 6 hours to get all the rigs through. Half the trucks were only 2WD and my 4Runner was handicapped with 3WD since I broke my ADD coupler system a few weeks earlier and didn't have the time or parts to have it ready in time. Needless to say we hit some really nasty red clay that just stuck to everything, even in 3WD I got spun to the right many times, because the right front wheel just got gummed up to the point where it wouldn't turn well.

The dirt roads became a thick muddy mess, so at one point we took a alternate route. After getting my 4Runner in place we were able to winch some of the trucks up a hill, just to find the road ahead washed out from a running creek. Instead of turning around, we stacked rocks and then proceeded to cross with a few minor mishaps. The last major section to overcome, several trucks slid off the edge and needed to be strapped up. Finally we were heading down hill and free of the fiasco of the morning, we stopped in Lovelock for the night, where my son did the laundry, everythng was muddy!

My power steering pump blew out much of it's fluid from the abuse it went through and one of my CV boots tore open form the onslaught of sticky mud. The famous quote of the day "Somebody help me before I die!" came from one of the guys who slid off the edge. Everybodys rigs had several hundred pounds of mud stuck to it. Not much of a fun high speed desert run in the dry heat.

Day 5

Half the rigs didn't even bother to stay and I wasn't too sure if my rig was gonna go as well, since I did have steering pump issues. But after running to the first check point, everything seemed fine. We ended up running aprox 40 mile section West of Lovelock towards Fenley, saw a few Antelope and plenty of cattle. Ironically this section turned out to be the most fun of the week, hitting some pretty nice rises and dips. It got a bit loose on some area's, with some big water puddles that I blasted through, some at over 60 mph. I had a few close calls. Overall we ended the trip at around noon. The drive home wasn't much fun, still had some mud in the rims that made the tires vibrate really bad. Scraped out what I could and took hwy 50 across the pass past Tahoe and down the 5 frwy home. From Carson City to Fresno it was nothing but rain and snow, the good news it by the time I arrived home 90% of the mud was gone, bad news, my OME right rear shock blew out, which almost felt like a tire going down.

If I had working 4WD this trip would have been much easier, in 2WD I got a lot of oversteer, where in 4WD I could drift the turns at higher speeds. Now I have to spend several weeks cleaning up the mess........

I'll post pictures soon, still trying to recover from the long drive home.....