Trip Report:
We met on time and headed up Wheeler's Pass. The trail was especially fun in places where the trail had been washed out recently. When we reached the summit, the winds were blowing at a sustained 40+ MPH so we rested for a whole 5 minutes and continued on. We followed the GPS track I had layed out in Google Earth. About 5 miles out, the track took a sharp left to take us up to a cool canyon where a geocache waited to be found. By the look of the trail, it was a bit overgrown, but I figured that it might get better. Brian (BCool) was not hip to getting too much desert pinstriping on his clean Limited, so I offered to do a little exploration before the others followed. I headed up the trail which quickly became ATV width in about 300 yards. Oops! But there was no place to turn around. There was a hill heading up on the right and a drop off on the left. I had to continue on for another 100 ft or so through the brush to get to a place where a 1000 point turn would get me turned around. It was really narrow but I got it around. Here is the Libby negotiating the turn.
When I got back to the main trail, we continued on and found a "real" trail that got us to the cache location without body damage. We ended up at about 8500ft. above sea level. Here we are at the trail's end. (It ended in a forest that had been burned a few years back. Tragic but beautiful.)
We trudged up a long steep hill to locate the cache which left us all wishing we spent more time at the gym! We used the excuse of thin air to make ourselves feel better.
We continued on up the next leg of the journey but it was ended about 5 miles short of our destination by a gate on the trail stating "Private Property" and "Attack Dogs" We decided that we should probably turn around rather than try the gate. Hehe.
Since our trip was cut short we decided to head to the Potato Ridge trail which was about an hour away. The trail ends in Red Rock Canyon state park which would get me much closer to home than backtracking would. Brian decided that he did not have enough time to run the trail so we parted ways, leaving me and JP (my friend in the TJ) to run it. We got to the trail about 3:30PM. By my estimations, we should have arrived at Red Rock at about 4:45PM. When we hit the difficult part of the trail about 4:15, we got about 1/2 way though the section. We stopped to look for a good line through the rocks and I headed up the trail on foot. I noticed a TJ coming down the trail at us. Since it's a single track trail, we decided to backtrack a little to the bottom of the nasty section to give the person coming down the mountain the right of way. So we waited, and waited. After about 10 minutes, we realized that they must have stopped or gotten stuck, so we headed up the trail on foot to see what was going on. The TJ was in the same spot as when I saw it bouncing down the trail 15 minutes before. We could see it was stuck. When we arrived at the TJ, the driver had abandoned it! It was a stock late 90s TJ with bald 28" tires, no lift, and no recovery equipment. It was high centered on a rock ledge. Obviously, the driver was an inexperienced person who came over from Red Rock. The trail from Red Rock to where we were is an interesting but stock friendly trail. They hit the nasty section and decided to try it. Bad idea! They had to have abandoned the TJ just minutes before we arrived, so we headed up the trail yelling for them to come back. We had tow straps, hi-lift jacks, a hand winch, etc. Meanwhile, the wind had really picked up. We waited for about 10 minutes to see if they heard our calls, but they never arrived. By now, it was 4:45 and we had no way to get past the stuck TJ since the trail is "wide-as-a-Jeep" We had to turn around and backtrack over 30 miles to get home. Yuck! We felt terrible that we couldn't help the stuck driver, but there was nothing we could do. We gave it our best shot.
I got home an hour later than I wanted to, but I did have alot of fun. Looking forward to the next outing!
BTW..."It'll buff right out."
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I think elections are coming up soon and when Burchie runs for President 
, we will need a new coordinator.
