The club planned to do a weekend campout somewhere in Arizona over the Labor Day weekend despite the 100 degree temperatures forecasted for most of the state.
As usual we got a mixed back of weather starting off Friday night with a short rainstorm that dissipated by 9pm.
We set out early Saturday morning to run Pet Cemetery.
The entrance to the trail was camouflaged by 5 foot tall weeds seen in the background of the first picture above.
I was first in line for the main event, a 5 foot deep crack. We have had many debates on how you could cross this thing without making a bridge, I put my theory to the test Basically I figured if you could get the tires in the right spots you would always have the two opposite side tires on solid ground and you would float the other tires over the gaps. Some of the pictures above were provided by Dave Rognlin, he also sent me this video which is pretty interesting since my rear tires didn't slip down as I crossed the crack like everyone else's did. I am thinking my drivers side front was a little higher than everyone else's which would have put more pressure on the opposite rear tire.
Much to everyone's surprise it worked and I crawled right on thru! In some of the spots where the rig really started leaning I winched the front end down to the axle, this helped a lot.
The next section has you climbing out of the upper end of the crack over some enormous boulders. I got to this point then winched forward a few feet (rear diff was caught) and then drove the rest.
Brian was behind me, he ended up sliding into the crack.
It took 3 winches from various positions to extract any rig that fell in that day.
These shots show the last tire coming off the wall on the opposite side of the crack.
Jay was a little hesitant bt I told him I could spot him thru. He followed my directions to a T and made it across. The second picture shows the critical key to keep from falling into the crack, your passenger side rear tire has to hold the line without sliding all the way into the crack. In this case Jay's flat tire helped.