We had a lot of fun yesterday. The following people showed up: me and rest of gang, Dave & Crystal, Jordan, Jason & one other person (sorry, forgot your name).
We all showed up around 9:00AM at the Outpost and aired down before we left. We started at the trailhead around 9:30AM or so.
Yours truly did a lousy job as a trail guide, missing the first two entrances before settling on the third entrance to Rocky Mountain loop and traveling north - northwest. We did a near loop going to Sawmill (92A). IIRC the ravine was on Sawmill and that was the first interesting challenge for the guys ("that was tight!").
After Sawmill we merged on to Dutch John (90), then on to Falls Dam (96) and finished the day with Dickie Bell (96A).
There were some notable obstacles on this route. I believe Dickie Bell is underrated in a couple of places. I remember two rocky uphill sections that gave me a bit of a workout.
This is Dave just past the first of the two harder rock formations on Dickie Bell.
One rock outcropping in Dickie Bell had three lines going up it and I first tried the center line and got stuck. I had to reverse and took the right line at which point I heard a loud crack and thought it might have been my front diff but luckily it was not
Dave followed right along and had to bump forward to get the KJ up using the momentum (you weren't stuck on anything, just didn't get enough flex to get traction to go forward).
There was also a section on Dickie Bell that had two lines going downhill. The left one was safer line, and the right downhill line could be done in a KJ with maybe a bump on the rear as the back end drops down.
The TJ guy did the right-hand line and tried to avoid the rock by going up the side of the wall. This nearly gave me a heart attack since it puts the TJ at quite an angle, but they weighted down the Jeep and got through it alright. Personally I wouldn't take that line even though it's more fun.
Overall the CRD's traction control worked out great.
So here we had three Jeeps: an open/open KJ, a CRD with traction control, and one TJ with 33" and one heck of a lift. All made it up the trails with different techniques
Nobody got stuck. Everybody had a great time. Will definitely do this again.
