1-21-08

While the group worked to get the broken stub out, Dennis and I headed back to camp for parts and soon nearly rolled forward down one of the double waterfalls (his stinger saved us from going over the second fall).

The first pic shows my view, as you can see we are actually resting on the stinger.

We eventually got the rig back over and down the falls, back to camp and fetched the parts. While in camp we also stole Jack's grill, some brats and buns and ended up BBQ'ing on the trail while Scott and Brad wrenched on his rig.

This spot is pretty brutal and so far I am the only one to ever drive it cleanly although Matt managed to recover from being on his side to back on all 4. I told everyone my line but you know how it goes, different rigs react differently.

This is the spot where Matt broke the first link bolt. We couldn't see anything broken and I thought it was a chipped ring gear so he continued forward.

The key for me is once you get the front tires up the crack, you need to try as hard as possible to keep them straight. They will naturally want to tug the wheel to the right and follow a groove in the rocks. If you can keep them somewhat straight it gives the back tires a better chance of tracking up the wall instead of dropping into the undercut. (This spot should be cake with rear steer and stickies). Once nearly there you can see in the last picture you still have to get the rear tires up a slight undercut which stretches the rig like a medieval torture rack.

Scott made it up the next fall and Matt started working on it but we soon stopped him due to his rear axle moving around more than it should. That's when we discovered the broken link mount bolt and then the other broken bold on the rear axle. We got the rig up in the air using a snatch block and figured out what we would need to bring back in the morning to fix his rig: new bolts and some hacksaws.

Just before dark we started hiking out and once we reached the trailhead we let a message for Barry to "send shuttle service for 6". About a quarter mile down the road the rescue party showed up and we all kinda wished we had also ordered a pizza

The next day we watched Matt destroy a few hacksaw blades and eventually got both broken bolts and the bent airshock swapped out.

From there we went into recovery mode and tried to just get out without stopping as much. Further up the trail, Wes took a bad bounce on one of the falls which took out 4 of the grade 9 steering bolts he had holding his arm to the rockwell knuckle. He scavenged one from each of the remaining arms and tried to take it easy the rest of the way out (winching where possible).

The rest of the trail is technical crawling with a few spots where you need to bump it if the tires don't hook up. Due to the cold and dampness of everything even the sticky tires required some gas pedal.

We all finally made it to the top close to dusk and were happy to see the rescue squad of Jack, Chad, Dennis and Graeme still waiting for us . This trip thru was pretty brutal with 3 of the 4 rigs on the trail needing major repairs at some point.