Great stuff, Jerry! So awesome you and Ross got to enjoy the weekend wheeling and hitting the highways. Ross got some serious trail time - you needed to wrestle the wheel away from him!
You got some good pics of the dust we had to go through. I appreciate that you said my KJ was black - funny how the hood looked gray after just a couple hours on the trail
I'll add some more Saturday pics and commentary/narrative:
Saturday morning, Colin, Jenny, Dan and me met up at the trailhead to start up the mountain to run Trails 2 and 16. Trail 2 was the feeder trail (rated "easy") to get us to Trail 16 ("moderate.") While we waited the ATV's started showing up along with some vehicles that would be bored with anything but diamond-rated trails:
Meanwhile, we waited till there was a break in the action before we headed out. The mud and dust is already starting to cake up:
So we get started on Trail 16, a 4.4 mile trail that we found out had a little bit of water - that Colin took full advantage of. There's more to that story that affected Colin on Sunday. Hint: Mud gets into the tiniest crevices!
There were a lot of ATV's on this trail - a beautiful run up the mountain with a wide variety of terrain. We had to let the ATV convoys pass us and while we waited we got some pics. Here is Dan, Colin and me:
And Colin, Jenny and Dan:
We got to our first significant obstacle - a ledge with a hard left hand turn. I have to be honest here - the pucker factor for yours truly was getting pretty high as I walked up the trail to get a look. It didn't help that one of the ATV's that we let pass had a tough time getting up the ledge:
Once he was out of the way, Dan got out of my KJ to spot for Colin. Now Colin is locked front and rear and made it up the ledge with no problem.
My KJ is unlocked on both axles so I had my doubts (and the tow strap within reach.) Dan and Colin assured me that momentum is my friend and to trust them and the KJ's ability. Jenny took pics - first with Dan getting the front positioned...
Then Up and Over:
The next section was the Rock Garden - and it required Dan to spot us up the hill. Colin first (I didn't get any pics of me going up - too focused on the correct line
)
Like I said above, Trail 16 has a lot of variety - not long after the Rock Garden we came up to a big, deep mud trough. Colin couldn't resist - Jenny got out to take some pics, Dan grabbed his camera for some video, and I was laughing so hard I didn't get a single shot. Colin did a half-pike into the mud, went up past the grill in the front and 1/3 of the way up the doors and made it out to the other side with no apparent problems (important word is "apparent.") Some shots after the splash:
Jenny documenting the evidence:
The winch was fully immersed:
And the engine bay got a fresh coat of paint, errr, mud:
There was a smaller trough just down the trail and so Colin took another bath for the cameras:
At the top of Trail 16 we met up with BlackwidowKJ06 (Sarah) and her friend Lewis driving his JKU. We let the KJ's cool down and got some more pics of the Trail 16 mud and dust:
Quick story: While we were coming up Trail 16 a family of four was in their Razor 4-door ATV with their two young sons in the back seat. They had a cooler strapped to the back shelf and had stopped for lunch at an area called The Waterfall, which was at the top of the Rock Garden. She saw us in our KJ's coming up the Rock Garden and said to us, "Ya'll are crazy to be driving those cars up here! Aren'tchya 'fraid of gettin' stuck?" We saw this family two more times and each time she told us we were crazy. On the connector trail between the campground and the trailhead they were coming back for the night as we were going up to the windmills and I asked her if she still thought we were crazy. "Yep, ya'll are just NUTS for driving them cars on those trails..." There's nothing else she could have said that would have made me prouder of our KJ's
On the way down to meet up with Jerry and Ross after lunch we came across some beautiful scenic overlooks looking south and west toward the Smokey Mountains:
I'll post shots of our evening ride to the windmills at the top of Patterson Mountain and our night ride coming back down in another post.
Bob