Our club packed up and headed for
Moab in late March. We wanted to get into town and wheel
before the main part of the Easter Jeep Safari started up. Since
Easter was so early this year we were expecting some wild weather
and mother nature did not disappoint.

The Pack Creek Ranch would be our
home for the next 5 days. The ranch is located just outside of
Moab in the appropriately name "Hell's Canyon". When
we arrived it was deceptively sunny. As we would soon learn
the weather in the canyon was not necessarily the same weather
occurring just 6 miles away in town (more on that later). the
first thing we wanted to do after a long 8 hour drive was unpack so
we could go drive some more on the rocks :) A quick inspection
of the house revealed we were missing a room. The brochure had
mentioned a bunk room. We found a kitchen (straight out of the
70's), a small living room with fireplace & electric roach
motel, a small bathroom and two bedrooms, but no bunk room.
There were two more doors that we assumed were closets, one was
indeed a small closet, the other was a large closet which housed two
bunks just off of the kitchen. With the mystery of the missing
bunk room solved we finished unpacking and headed in to town.


Since it was late in the day we
decided to hit the Hell's Revenge trail since it was very close to
town. Right off the bat Scott broke his radiator on dump bump.
His front end sheet metal was slowly getting caved in and the little
bit of movement that occurred on his first attempt was enough to
send the fan into his 3 week old radiator. I also
suffered mechanical difficulties when I discovered my steering was
not working. It looked as though the front seal was blown out
and the pump was not generating any pressure. The rest of the
group went to try out the hot tubs while Scott and I limped back to
the rigs. Despite trailering to within 1000 feet of the
trailhead we got a warning from local law enforcement about needing
to trailer to the trailheads.

Tuesday morning arrived and Scott was
able to locate a radiator for his Jeep. Mark spent the morning
working on solving some steering issues with his new buggy and I
went in to town to try and find a power steering pump. The
best I could do was a stock TC style pump with the intake pointing
in the wrong direction. I planned to pull the fittings off of
my PSC pump and install the stock unit later that evening to get me
rolling again. For the time being I was going to ride along.


We started running Rusty nail around
noon.





The trail is typical Moab with lots
of ledges to climb.


We were doing great until Pat's rear
driveshaft broke on this obstacle. He pulled the shaft and
continued on with just front wheel drive.





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