Written by Steve Friend on August 1, 1998

Day One, Monday

This is the trip report for the portion of the 4 wheel drive event that we (I) was involved in. There should be more reported later by, probably Matt Osburn.

This event has been in the works for several months and has involved the West Coast 4 Wheel Drive Club, Jeep L internet, and ???. There will be portion of this report that will not make sense and that is for a Shot at the other ??

West Coast 4 Wheel Drive Club staged its event around the Jeep L run this year. Something that is unique, unusual, and fun at the same time. There are folks that have never met one another, yet, at the same time, folks that we know very well from the internet, just not in person. Almost to a "t", everyone we met, was just like we envisioned on the net. That was a good thing.

5 members of WC4WDC left Orange County on Sunday, July 26th, in the early AM. We all arrived at each designated spot without incident. By that I mean that Dave Swanson, and myself stayed at Sly Park RV park, David Oh and Bob Bills +his fiancé, Soraya, stayed at the Ice House resort, and an acquaintance of Bob Bills, we'll call Bob2. Ray stayed at a KOA in South Lake Tahoe.

The next morning at about 9:15 am, we arrived at the Ice House resort to refuel and get to the designated meeting spot. Around 10:30, those of us at the spot, decided to leave and start the trail, 11 rigs in all. This left about 1/2 of the group still not there yet, but Duffy was there to coordinate the second half of the group. The general consensus of the group was the first half would start, possibly keeping reduced delays in case of trouble. I was designated the leader of the group, but the true leader was Paul Nasvik for this day. He had just done the trail the week before, so he was the natural lead as he knew the way well and was not likely to get lost with all of the off shoot trails that are in the area. We had several rigs locked front and rear, limited slip combinations, and open. Automatics, 4 speeds with grannies, and stock setups. V8's to 4 cyclinders. Older CJ5's to New TJ's. There were two of us with trailers. My custom built Mule Trailer was a virgin. Brand new to the trail and brand new to the driver. The trailer is setup with removable compartments inside and 11 gallons of water, accessable from the outside. The hitch is a "Chartwright hitch". Pretty functional and did not seem to bind. The other trailer was driven by Dennis of Jeep L and is called the Rubicon. Nice trailer, pretty basic, but that devil followed him everywhere. Our group had came from all over the map, with Josh in his TJ from Massachusetts the furthest, I think. Bud had purchased a few sets of Nutz for distribution to a selected few and I proudly tied them on my chair rack on the back of the Jeep. Mine were bright orange. That along with the weiner on the antenna and the Eugene Stickers, outfitted my Jeep well.

Right off the bat, the trail from Loon Lake got interesting. The weather had exposed some large rocks at a turn, between some trees. Everyone made it through, but all had rocker guards with some new scrapes. BTW, I won't mention this again, I promise, but this trail is not the same trail it was a couple of years ago. The rocks, trees, and Mother nature have changed this trail a bunch in two years. Some of it harder, some of it easier, but most of it just different.

Did I mention that I came down off a ledge that resulted in a interesting noise in the engine compartment? Could not figure it out. Then it went away. Oh well, things like this happen right? Later at home I found that a sneaky rock or branch dented the hell outa my oil pan. Guess I was lucky that it did not pierce the pan. I must have wanted a new pan anyway.

Paul leading with open diffs on his lifted TJ was fun. The track that he follows is not the same track as would be followed by a locked up rig. After only a short time, we had 10 rigs thru the spots, only to find that we had a lost rig, trying to catch up. That was Dennis. We were on the trail about 2 hours before the second group started up the trail. I will not dwell on the other group too much except that they had some hard times with some breaks right away that delayed them even more. I think that 12 rigs started with 7 pulling into Spider Lake. The rest of the group showed up to Spider Lake the next day after we had left.

The experience level of this group varied from most experienced to novice. Bob2 only had one other trip under his belt. Now Bob2 is an interesting person. He is not part of WC4WDC, not part of Jeep L, he just showed up with a recommendation from a supplier and hosted by Bob Bills by default. BTW, he was a dick. He had a winch though and Super Swampers, so he could go anywhere, even with a lousy battery, electrical system, no lockers, no brains, and a marginal CB.

We had fun, everyone was having fun, we made almost all of the obstacles without a problem. There seemed to be a few extra stops for Bob2 as he wanted to look at each and every rock to be sure that we could make it without problems. Nothing wrong with that, but pebbles?? This was gonna get interesting.

The trail up to this point was interesting. Not too difficult, challenging, but way different from a couple of years ago. Oh, yea, not to say that again. Without Paul, I think we would have taken a few detours, just to keep on the trail. At the "slabs", we all caught up and started the rest of the trail. Right about here, the trailer articulated enough to cut the tye rap holding my Nutz. They hit the ground. Dave called out the problem and I asked Renie to jump out and get them. She grabbed the CB and yelled out that there was a lot of things that she would do for me, but jumping out and grabbing those damn Nutz was not one of them. I had to go get get them myself.

We never seemed to have had time for lunch. We were gonna make it to Spider lake and it seemed that we were only just 1/2 hour away, for several hours. At about noon, we passed a female hiker with full back pack and secondary carrying pack. She was escorting 4 young'ns as well. Paul stopped to insure that they were ok and ended up carrying her back pack to Spider Lake. She arrived about the same time at the lake as we did and picked up the pack. She called us angels. And even called me an Angel of Mercy. Don't think that I have ever been called an angel before. Must have been talking to Paul. Kind of cool if she was talking to me too, though.

Did I mention that I was pretty happy with my trailer? It tracked well, I could back up to 90 degrees when the lockers would not let me turn and then the darn thing would follow right my Swampers foot prints. It got smacked on the lower corners a few time, but all in all, I just sort of forgot about it. All of the rigs were doing great. There were a couple of delays, but we were not in a hurry anyway.

When we got to the Little Sluice, it was plugged with Toyotas. Off we went to the bypass and made it to camp about 3:00. 'bout the time that we settled in camp and started dinner, (marinated Tri-Tip), the other Jeep L group showed up and set up camp. We were just ahead of the Toads, so they went around the lake and camped in another spot. The CB's were working really well, and I picked up Matt Osborn from Loon Lake, telling me that he was coming in the next day. He traveled out with the broken rigs to insure that they did not have any other problems and did not travel alone, He indicated that they would try for Spider Lake the next day.

That night was interesting. Lots of lies, stories (same thing?), and we had a great camp fire. Now the other group did not camp with us as it would have been crowded and there was another spot just a short distance away. Now the Brad, Bud, Duffy, Bart group tried for hours to get a camp fire going. Man the lies at that camp were more than a person could stand. Pretty soon, a chain saw was sort of fired up and fire wood was being made from a dead stump. I am not sure what time their fire took off, but I went to bed about 10 pm and did not see a lot of light over there.

I revisited our camp fire again and Bob and his fiancé showed up with some red wine, after having champagne to celebrate the engagement. The stories started floating around when the subject came to Bob and Soraya, and then money, and then Bob and his profession. He commented that he was still a broke lawyer, but was "waiting for the big divorce" so that he could retire. As you can imagine, the camp fire got really quiet. Finally Soraya asked Bob, "just what did you mean by that?". Ol Bob finally realized what he said and the laughter was pretty loud. (Bet they had an interesting conversation under the sheets later, huh. Ha.

Day Two, Tuesday

We left Spider Lake at about 9 am. Some of the group decided to stay until Wed. to leave so this group totaled about 10 rigs, including Bob2.

We had a bit of trouble getting outa Spider Lake as there are a bunch of off shoot trails that leave everywhere except where ya want to go. Finally, with only one turn around, we were off towards Buck Island and Rubicon Springs. We had to wait for about 15 Toyotas and Samies, but figured that they should make some good time. We heard that they were taking most of the bypasses.

Along the trip, we encountered a lot of deep water and mud. At one place, the water pushed over the top of Dennis's bumper. It came to the bottom of my doors. Then we started up a rocky incline that gave the open vehicles (oh wait, there was only one open vehicle and you know who that was), some trouble. Bob Bills got a little too far in front of Bob2, when Bob2 called out that he was stuck. With Bob1 too far away to tow Bob2, Dennis decided to go around him and hook up a strap. What, Bob2 did not have a strap. Well, as we were walking back, we hear, "no problem, I'll just hook up the winch to Dennis". Then we heard "Ahh, someone come back hear and give me a jump, my battery is dead". 'guess that ol Bob2 did not know that he should be running his engine. Oh, yea, his engine was sort of running and his kid was playing with the winch controls as he was trying to start the Jeep. Poor Dennis, he was caught in the middle of this mess. Finally, after Bob2 had successfully plugged a hole in the trail for about 2 hours, an on coming Toyota from the Central Cal 4WDC district made it to the Jeep, jumped him and we made him back up to a Old Big Sluice bypass. I popped his hood and readjusted his carb to run ok and he started looking around for his kid. Well, the kid had decided that he did not want to run with his dad, so he wandered off to the rest of the group. 'course I forgot to say that Bob2's CB was not working so he could not locate the kid. We finally left him with Dennis and found the kid at our rigs. Bob2 finally made contact and told us to keep him. At least until we could hook up again at Buck Island.

trail. I found a way to go at the drop almost straight on and the rest of the group decided to follow me. This drop was sort of straight down, with a 90 degree left at the bottom. The depth was about the length of a Jeep. After being guided down, I guided the rest of the group down. The CJ's made it look pretty easy, but slow. The TJ had a bit of trouble. It turns out, I think, that the coil suspension allowed the body to move separate from the axles. There was some discussion about the rear sway bar not being disconnected to, but what the heck do I know about that. Anyway, after the third decent, I got the fender past a spot that would damage the rig, but we still got the fender flare. At the bottom of the Old Big Sluice, is the spot where the bypass comes back to the trail. No Toyotas, no Bob2. Hmmmmmm.

About this time, we got a CB contact with Paul and he joined us about 15 minutes later. This was about 1:00. Paul had left camp 52 minutes earlier. Paul reported that the rigs that had broken the day before, were rolling into camp at about the same time he was leaving. That was good. Anyway, off to Buck Island we went. As we traveled over the damn at Buck Island, there is an interesting almost vertical climb. I made it on the second try with the trailer more than 90 degrees to the Jeep. I hope there are some good pictures of that. There is another interesting spot that has a large rock in the middle of it at the top of the climb. David Oh was the third one back when we heard him say that he was damaged. He had centered the big rock and bent his tie rod. A little further was some shade, so we straightened it there. I suggested that we put a jack handle over the rod at that time, but we all decided that it was probably gonna last as is and we could fix it at camp when it had cooled down a bit. Well, that was a bad decision. David bent that thing at least 4 more times, with Ray behind him, pulling the tie rod back in shape with his winch.

I put Bob2 in front and we made it to the Big Sluice only to find it plugged with a broken Toyota pickup. One of the group in front was a member of the Pirates of the Rubicon and they had spare parts. About an hour later, we were rolling, over. (Little Jeep humor there) Then we heard that Bob1 was damaged. We found that he had pounded his skid plate enough that it raised the transmission enough to run the fan into the shroud and barely touch the radiator. Bob cut the shroud away and we continued on.

We made it to Rubicon Springs at about 5 pm. We were tired and decided to wait until we were fed and relaxed before we tackled the two breaks. We fixed David's bent tie rod by taking it off, pounding it pretty straight, and slipping a High Lift jack handle over the assembly. We fixed Bob Bills problem by lowering the skid plate about 4 washers on each bolt. Ray had all of the bolts and washers for this fix. This moved the fan about 1/2" away from the radiator.

Nice campfire and we were off to bed. We had lots of company in the way of mosquitos. We all got a gazillion bites that night.

Day Three, Wednesday. The last (sniff, snivel) day.

We showed Dennis how to plug the side wall on his left front tire. David Oh donated the parts to him and I did the honors. Nice guys huh. It is always a good day when you can stick a tool thru the side wall of a friends tire. Ha.

By 8 am we were on our way outa Rubicon Springs. Paul led the way out of there too. I think that he likes it up front with me. Hehehe.

Right at the beginning of Cadillac Hill, or just at the end of the Springs, is an interesting drop off into the creek. Like straight down into the water and a little left turn at the same time. The trailer was setting level when the Jeep was straight into the water. Kind of got the ol adrenaline going first thing in the morning. We made it across lots of water and pretty deep too. Then we started up the hill. I had been running the twin sticks such that I was in 2 wheel drive low when the rig decided that it wanted 4 wheel drive. It slipped, and slid until I put in the clutch and hit the brakes to shift into 4 wheel drive. NO BRAKES. Down the hill I went lickity split about 30 feet. Paul said that it looked kewl. My wife did not think there was anything kewl about it. After that, I advised the group that it might be a good idea to get the brakes hot to dry them out. Up the hill we went. This is a good climb with lots of obstacles while you are climbing. There have been quite a few folks roll their rigs and at least one person killed. He is buried at the bottom of the hill and has fresh flowers to mark the spot. So, up we go. Paul decides to get stuck, but finally got around the spot and we all continued on. Then we heard that Bob2 was stuck at a different spot with a bypass. We told him to take the bypass so when I asked him if he took it, his son said, "no, Bob2 (ya got to kind of like the kid now) did not take the bypass, that is why he is stuck. Hahahaha.

Welp, he got over the rough section with some spotting and we were off. Then we heard Josh say that he pinched his tire and it was down to the rim. With no air back there, he decided to change the tire. A few minutes, we were off again until we reached the top. We rounded ourselves up and got pictures about the time that the Toyota group came up so we left them to the picture spot.

About 1/2 hour later, we ran across a CJ5 blocking the trail. The owner had some help from a friend trying to move it with a Pathfinder. He just could not do it. It turns out that he had an electrical fire and the rig was dead, dead, dead. So I passed him up, and we hooked him up to Dave and we towed him to the parking lot. He volunteered a $100 to us, but like dummies, we declined. It is a Jeep thing ya know. Then, Ray suggested that I go back and suggest that he donate some $$ to the Toys for Tots run that West Coast puts on in December. He was happy to and said that we will get a donation in time for the run. Nice guy.

Well, we all aired up, and were ready to roll when Bob2 came by my rig and demanded some air. I started to suggest that he had enough hot air, but did not think it worth it. So, he fired up my rig and got the air that he needed.

We were off. About 1/2 way to South Lake Tahoe, Bob2 (guess his darn CB was gonna continue to work) called out that he wanted gas. We were 15 miles from a gas station and told him. Well, after racing his engine, and tail gating David Oh, he ran outa gas across the street from the gas station. David Oh pulled into the station and left him. Then as we were getting ready to go into the restaurant for lunch, the CB crackled to life with Bob2 telling us that we had to give him another jump. His battery was dead. Well, guess who had the most convenient battery cables. So when David Oh got back from jumping him we all had lunch.

We all departed separate ways after lunch with Josh and his rider heading back to their camp, Ray off to the KOA to meet his wife, Dave and I off to Sly Park, and Bob1, Bob2 and David Oh, off to Orange County.

BTW, our rigs in camp were undisturbed and we had none of the problems that Brad, Bud, and Will had with the same people. Think it might have been them? Ha.

Damage report:

• Two pinched tires (Dennis and Josh)
• Two beat up skid plates (Bob1 and Paul)
• Bent the hell oil pan (Steve)
• Some damage to both trailers but we expected it
• Bent tie rod (David)

I think that was all. Oh, yea, my Nutz hit the ground once, but my wiener stayed intact and limp (Renie added that but it wasn't my fault!) in place the whole trip.

Welp, that is the run report for this Jeep L and West Coast 4WDC event, no Shots intended.

Guess that should not have bagged on ol Bob2 so much, he did provide us with entertainment. We even found out later, that he went into one of the local Jeep supplies, called Jeeps-R-Us (don't asked me ask Bob1) and told them that he just made it thru the Rubicon without damage or help, but that some of the less experienced wheelers had lots of damage. Jeez, I hope that I never see him again. He'll probably show up at our next meeting. I think I'll kill Bob1 now.

Oh, just got wind that Gonzo Dave rolled his Jeep on Cadillac but no one was hurt. We'll have to wait to hear his story.