Moab 2005

 

   
 
 

Moab 2005

Moab Day 2 - Rusty Nail, BFE

Moab Day 3 - BFE, Pritchett Canyon

Moab Day 4 - Pritchett canyon, BFE


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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