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Story and Photos by Dave Chou & John Cullen

Offroad Day Kamp and Rock Krawl '99

The trails we picked were challenging trails for stock to slightly modified rigs. Even though my YJ was more equipped than that, I was looking for an easy day.

Paragon originally was a strip mine operation in Eastern PA. There are lots of valleys and hill climbs, rock ledges etc..

We started out on the trails, with nothing very difficult. It was mostly tight trails through the woods. Then, we played in some deep mud while the stock vehicles watched.

We got to a tough hill climb that you had to turn right very hard at the top or you would go over the other side, unintentionally, and down a 40 -50 foot drop. Some of the stock trucks took the bypass, which was good and the rest of the rigs started up.

The first truck made it look easy, then we followed. The next truck was an older CJ-7 wheeling with his girl friend and 8 month old baby. We got quite a scare, when at the top he over-shot the trail and teetered on 3 wheels, then recovered. The next truck up was the Jeep that was late arriving. This guy didn't watch the spotter, panicked at the top when the rear tire spun a little, and gunned the engine. He popped up on the trail, panicked again and jammed the brakes on, which shifted all the weight to the other side. The stock run had its first roll of the day. This truck went over 4 times, trashing the truck and scaring all out of the other drivers. The passenger and driver were fine, but were, certainly, shook up.

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