June 5, 2004

We decided to have the club run up north this month to get out of the sweltering heat in the valley.  Despite the altitude the temperature was still 95 or so degrees during the day.  The best part was after the sun went down, 60 degrees never felt so good.

(Click for larger images)

Camp was relatively shaded but the bugs did come out in force just before dusk.

The trail for today was Skullcrusher.  It's pretty much a non-stop pumpkin patch in the heart of "Big Tire Country".

There was no relaxing here, you had to crawl the trail constantly trying to weave your differentials around and over the diff grabbing rocks.

The trail got progressively harder as we went.  By mid afternoon we were in a sea of car sized boulders.

There were a few vertical obstacles like this one about 2/3's of the way into the trail.

Jay bent a rear leaf spring while trying to get up this waterfall.  It actually bent while he was backing down it to line up for another try, the shackle dug into the rock behind him.

The next casualty of the day was my drivers side rear axle.  I was climbing over one of the rock piles when I heard a loud bang.  I am pretty sure it was just fatigue since none of the wheels were bound up at the time. Out came the tools.  The first step was to chain the suspension to the frame so it would not droop. Next, we jacked the rig up and angled the axle so we wouldn't lose any gear oil. The brake line was then plugged and finally the four bolts holding the axle assembly on the housing were removed.  The break was nice and clean, right at the end of the axle.  To get the broken shaft out we did have to use Jay's welder to attach a bolt to the end of the axle.  We then worked the shaft out with a pair of pliers.

It was getting pretty late in the day by this point.  We were all nearly out of water and didn't know how much further the end was so we decided to call it a day.  We backtracked through the boulder piles till we hit the access road.  Scott and Jack drove up to find the exit while Jay and I headed back to camp.  I did spot a pretty big brown bear walking up the wash we had just vacated, glad we didn't run into him while we were fixing my rig.