Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Many of us had another great day, others not so great. Nine trucks met at Safeway, 6 made it to Bill Moore due to TeeHee having fuel supply issues and Ice House and ? stayed to assist. I'm not sure what happened but heard from the tail that they did briefly catch up to us on Bill Moore. I hope you guys all made it home safely w/o too much more difficulty and sorry you didn't get to wheel with us.
Here's Rob providing early excitement for everyone.
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Chris in Florida
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
NICE LEAN!!!!! Where are the rest of the pics.. report? YOU TEASE
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
hey theres a hole there....
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Of course Brody jumped in to save the day and get Rob out. I imagine some pics will be coming soon enough. Thanks Pete!
It was nice to meet you and your wife Aaron/FangerFire88! Fearless wheeling in the mud and hope you both had a good night at Bill Moore Lake and that the mosquitos spared you. Twisted Bronk/Adrian, great meeting you as well and watching you wheel that thing, very impressive and appropriately named. Fred and kids, nice to see you again and hope you didn't have any issues getting home, I didn't realize you were leaving when you did. More important I hope that you didn't lose all your brake fluid on the way home.
Dr Unit/Rob had some bad luck again after the mud pit on Bill Moore by having a big rock come loose under his truck on Red Elephant and sending him on two wheels while he unwillingly traveled over it. His skid plates saved him serious damage and it appears his only damage is some bent skid plates. Hoping that's it Rob!
The recurring comments from all of us was "How can these 3 trails all be rated the same?" No way. Nope. It just ain't so!
Fun day, sorry we parted in haste but apparently we did since we never saw you in the rear view!
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Chris in Florida
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Randy, we decided that we would have had to do some serious body work on your truck if you were with us. Fender trimming, bed bobbing, etc. :lol:
My camera died so we'll have to wait for more pics. :(
Oh yeah, I better mention before someone else does, I seem to have an issue with trees since I tagged another one today. Damn! These were some narrow trails! Watch the big rock on the left while the tree sneaks up on the right.
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Chris in Florida
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Chris ya gotta watch out for them boogertrees the have a way of jumping out there when you least expect then too!
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Yeah, too many more I'll have to start cutting off damaged parts.
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Chris in Florida
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Great pics.. That poor S-10 looks like it has seen better days
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
someone beat the hell out of it to break the balljoints on the a-arm... poor little guy...LMAO
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
I do like seeing how far an FJC can lean while I am not in it.
Narrow trail? Big rock and trees? I don't remember that from last season. As trees have not been a friend to my rig, I will have to watch that. With all the branch growth (Barbour Forks) that is being reported I am not going to have any paint left at the end of the season!
Good pictures.
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Cool looking trails.
That S-10 looks like one of them folks that thinks off roading means getting air every chance you can. Stock suspensions can only take so much of that kind of abuse before they leave you stranded on the trail.
Hopefully, there was a lesson learned, probly not though.
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
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Chris in Florida
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Great run! I hope everyone got all of their mechanical problems sorted out and got home safely! We missed wheeling with all of you guys this run! You all looked like you had some really nice rigs!
Rob definitely got his 4X4 fix in for the day. The three trails run in conjunction with each other make for a really good day of wheeling, but, like has been mentioned, the trees are very close together and everyone did a little pinball action getting through the Mill Creek and Red Elephant trails. These last two should be on Randy's NOT TO DO list as there is no way to get a rig the size of his through them. I would say that a regular full size pick up/Chevy Blazer is about the absolute maximum. I will repeat what Chris said (Hey Charles.....)though the trails are all rated the same in Charles Well's books, Mill Creek and Red Elephant are significantly harder than Bill Moore Lake.
On the Chevy S 10: Hard to say if bad driving caused the damage. If he had come in from Red Elephant, then run Mill Creek, then started on Bill Moore, the owner of this rig could easily have done the CV damage that happened. We trashed a R&P the last time there and trashed it farther to get to where we could finish Mill Creek and get to where we could coast down to Empire. I didn't think it was funny as this isn't a great place for trail damage of any kind and it really sucks having to leave your rig on the trail.
BTW...the damage to this rig is one of the reasons I always go on about getting a junkyard CV for a trail spare if you run IFS. CVs break, and actually break fairly easily if you get them bound up. The trail repair takes a little over an hour..Just a heads up....
Many thanks to everyone who provided ballist and assistance helping Rob get his rig out without flopping it. Adrian helped quite a bit and provided the 'second brain/second set of eyes' that are sometimes so critical.
I am going to post the pictures that LaDawn took of the recovery seperately as this was another 'a matter of inches' deal. The pictures show that Rob entered the obstacle pretty well, but got hung up a little bit. He had stopped and was waiting for a little assistance. As he was sitting there, a little bit tippy, his rig all of a sudden slid sideways, deeper into the mud hole, getting extremely tippy. Way past the 30 degree+ mark on the inclinometer...way past...
I didn't realize quite how bad it was, but saw that he was going to need a tug and drove around to get in front of him. When I went to attach a line, I could see that he was right on the verge of flopping over on his side...literally a matter of an inch. Everybody grabbed some straps and I stepped into the goo (which immediately went way over the tops of my boots
This was pretty critical. For one thing I was standing in exactly the wrong spot to be...on the downhill side in the mud...and Rob's FJ was teetering enough that I could move it with a gentle push of my hand. We needed to be able to get tension on the FJ so that it didn't flop over while we were pulling it out. Anyway, a bunch of folks got on the rock rail strap and I hooked up to the front for a tug. No luck. I was slightly downhill and in the mud and my tires simply spun. Adrian suggested using the winch after anchoring the back of my rig, which we then did.
A point here: On recoveries of any kind, two brains and two sets of eyeballs on the problem are usually enough. Many more than this usually complicates the matter. It is helpful if the other person has a bunch of experience as Adrian obviously has...Adrian was able to point out a better angle than the one I was looking at and since it was obviously better than the way I was thinking (mine would've worked, too, but was not as good) we just put it to work...Done deal. This proved to be the ticket and, after getting enough pressure off of Rob's front tires, were able to get the tires turned in the right direction and Rob out. Case in point on the two brains/two sets of eyes: I hooked up my strap to a better angled point on my front bumper and Adrian caught that I had run the strap around a roll bar gusset that was a narrow piece of 3/16" steel. The strap could very easily have been cut here.
It is easy to flop a rig, BTW, and the time from being just a little tippy to going over happens extremely quickly...I hope the pictures explain the recovery well enough. If anyone has questions about why something was done, I'll be happy to answer them. BTW...I didn't like standing on the downhill side of Rob's rig. It simply wasn't a good place to be. Someone had to get the straps attached to this side and I did it as carefully as was possible. I had a couple of 'escape routes' planned out before I jumped down into the mud, none of which was stellar as the mud was over my boots. If I had to move quickly, this was going to prove the make or break as I would have probably needed the seconds getting my boots out of the mud. Just glad I didn't have to find out..
At the risk of being even more long winded than I already have been, and because I think this is important, here is what my decision was based on:
It was obvious that we only needed a hundred pounds of pressure to keep Rob's rig from flopping. Rather than attach the strap to the uphill side of the roof rack, things not reknown for their super strong attchment points to begin with, I wanted to get as much bearing over the top of the rig as possible to prevent it shearing at the wrong moment. Ditto with attaching the strap to the downhill side of the rock rail. Attaching the strap here and then over the top of the rig gave the most bearing surface in the most critical spot. If you look at the recovery pictures of my rig's flop at Wheeler, you will see I did the same thing there.
It is also VERY IMPORTANT to listen to the other person helping and to implement their ideas ASAP if they are better than yours. Thanks Adrian! So, put your ego aside, be open to input from the other guy and simply get the job done as safely as conditions allow. This cannot be stressed enough...
Here are my pictures:
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
More recovery pictures:
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
The last two of the recovery and trail run pictures:
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Trail run pictures continued:
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
The last two: The Red FJ was part of a group of two nice folks that we ran into on the trail that followed us out. Excuse the smudge on the camera..that was some smooge from the mud pit....
Re: Bill Moore/Mill Creek/Red Elephant
Wow pete the first pic of the fj didnt do justice as to how F'd in the mudhole it really was! that thing does look like its about to flop and get its belly scratched! (edit: not a hummer but an fj i was very tired)
Glad you were able to get it out with no issues.
On the other hand i totally agree with you on working together to accomplish the goal and not get to big headed over who's right and who's wrong with an idea of recovery. When my friend and i went up on Yankee and got hung up on the rock he got out and had me "spin tires till nothing happened" and after 15 minutes of that crap i got out and examined the true mechanics of how i got stuck and factoring in that i am being pulled downhill by our friend GRAVITY i pointed out to him why spinning tires does nothing. I then told him can i do it the right way whilst explaining to him why his method of non intelligent recovery (he didn't put much thought into it) was not working. I then proceeded to explain to him what we have to do to work with what is against us (rock, gravity snow) and how to let them work for us by 1: strap truck as to not let it slide downhill out of control but enough to do what i want it to do 2: lift the AXLE which was hung up not the tire sitting in free air OVER the rock 3: let gravity pull truck over the rock to clear and get tire back weighted on ground. It took about 15 minutes of him saying "this will work, just give it gas and turn your wheels this way" then realizing nothing was happening to 45 minutes of me analyzing the predicament and coming to a workable solution that didn't damage anything and got us off the rock. Now had he had more trail experience and a working knowledge of leverage, weight distribution, GRAVITY and where we were bound up on it would have gone much faster. Also dont rush stuff, relax and work the problem.
Along with what Pete said above about the recovery, Solve the problem, don't just throw possible solutions at it and hope one will work, identify safety hazards and address them first if possible before further work is done, i strapped the truck to a good size tree knowing that once off the rock the truck may slide downhill and it actually did a bit. Not doing this will end up in Sh!t breaking people getting hurt and then your in a world of hurt. Redneck recovery doesn't work well. Identify a solution, plan the solution, implement the solution. Always be mindful of safety.
Good write up Pete!
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