New Years Day - 1/1/24 - Switzerland Trail

[Mountaineer01]

We had a group of 4 on this trip: Mike (TJMike), Andrew (a1gemmel), Ty (TyTheJeepGuy), and myself. We met up at the West entrance of the Southern spur of Switzerland where we aired down and got ready. Ty came in his J10 pickup hauling a snowmobile in the back, but had no issues with the trail.

The snow coverage was pretty low and there were big portions of the trail that had exposed dirt, so we made quick work of the Southern spur. We then went to the Northern spur which was much of the same. We took a little detour down a side trail off the Northern spur, I believe its marked as 221.1 by the forest service. There are some old mines down there to explore, but they have been blocked from going inside.

Then we came back up and hit the rock obstacle (waypoint 2 on TrailsOffroad), which Mike's Jeep made light work of, and Andrew's Toyota didn't have much trouble with either. I did the run from the side with a little bit of speed, and Ty sat these out since he had the snowmobile in the back. We called it a day here and went back to the trailhead to air up and go our separate ways.

Hopefully we get some better snow next year to bash around in, but the weather was perfect so overall a good day! I totally forgot to take pictures, so if anyone has any to upload please add to this!

[Jim]

You're the first to get the 2024 Wheeler badge - congrats!

[TyTheJeepGuy]

Thanks for organizing, had a fun day! I'd been wrenching all weekend getting an in-tank pump working so I didn't have to hear an inline pump screaming anymore so it was a nice payoff. Thanks to everyone accommodating me bringing the snowmobile along for the laughs.

[TyTheJeepGuy]

A Mountaineer breaching in the wild

[a1gemmel]

It was a fun day! I'm bad at remembering to get my camera out, only snapped this one photo of Mike helping Isak get the mountaineer around the switchback at the bottom of 221.1.



The hunch I had about my new-to-me snowmobile just needing an italian tune-up turned out to be correct, afterwards Ty and I did a bit of riding around the west side of 120J and after about half an hour it stopped smoking like it was going to burn to the ground.

[TyTheJeepGuy]

https://imgur.com/a/MK4yvHU

That was supposed to be included earlier

[TjMike]

Thank you Isak for putting this together. Even with the little snow still a fun day of exploring random trials, mines, and old equipment with Isak, Andrew, and Ty. Andrew really knew the area, big thanks to him.
I didnt take many pictures either but here's one of Isak showing what his Moutaineer can do and another random pic of how little snow there was.