Day 2 begins with the
breakfast of champions (remember my Ho-Ho's and Twinkies mentioned
before?). I'm telling you, fit for a king...(B) that is. After
breaking camp, we backtracked a bit down the dusty gravel trail
and came to a fork in the road. The right featured what seemed to
be an infinite mud hole and the left seemed to be gravel and good
running. Yep...you guessed it... we traveled left. We drove for
what seemed a few more miles and came to a small mud hole.
Surrounded by 3 in. Alders it seemed the only way was "through"
. We made it through the first without incident and did not even
stop to take pictures (boo hoo).
The
stock XJ made it through, and so did J's S-10 without any
hang-ups. Since I was official picture taker, we did not get a
shot of my MJ plowing through. NOTE: The huge splash you see is
not necessarily from too much speed There is a huge drop-off right
in the middle of this stream. Most Alaskan streams are not
polluted. They are naturally dirty with microscopic glacial silt
which can be a grayish to deep brown muddy color. Although, there
are some great clearwater streams also for the angler types. Just
not in this area.
Thinking the worse
was behind us we traveled onward, only to come to a wonderfully
HUGE, seemingly impassable, "black hole" of a mud pit,
which MR.GMC had somehow neglected to mention at our meeting about
4 miles back. Out with the hop boots once again to check out the
area. This pit made a nice 90 degree turn into oblivion and there,
right in front of us was a Honda Fourtrax 4x4, completely buried
in the mud almost to its seat! Totally abandoned, or so it seemed.
This
is at about 2500 ft. above sea level. The one large advantege of
Alaskan wheeling being up high is that no big trees get in your
way after about 3300 ft.. It's all just big globs of small brush.
Not much to winch too so a Pull-Pal would be a great piece of
equipment to have on any Alaskan trip.
We freed the MJ in
near-record time and proceeded to hack up underbrush to lay into
the ruts so the others would not follow my path. Better them than
me being stuck or getting the other rigs stuck. So we made it back
home with bruised but not beaten ego's. Remember this, though,
even though it may sound like a somewhat negative trip. You must
agree with this quote: "The absolute WORST day wheelin'
Beats
the BEST day workin'."
See ya on the trails, Ben and
the upgraded STOMPER |
This
was the "Black Hole" of mud holes that we came across.
You can see it seems to go on for eternity and then makes an
immediate 90 deg. turn and about another 500 ft. of mud pit
surrounded by Alder brush. YUCK ! Time to turn around as King had
only Goodyear AT's ( the best tires of the bunch) and was not in
the mood for more digging, pushing, pulling, and swearing.
We then met up with a
guy and his girl wheeling alone in what seemed to be a
brand-spankin' new Z-71 GMC traveling back. Being only a one way
goat trail, anyway, we were prompted to shove it in reverse to
make it to a wider area to let the GMC pass. After backing up for
what seemed an eternity we finally found a space that would let
the truck pass. We could only pass one at a time, though, so it
was like one of those switch-a-roo games or shuffling cards.
This
was a good alternate area that we made it to. Although lack of
good mud rubber under all of our rigs stopped us short of our
goals. (Why is that always the case?)
Now I know what you're thinking
and you are RIGHT! We decided to ditch the 4x4s for a few and hoof
it up the mountain side to eat lunch. We saw some wildlife (a fox,
a squirrel, and a beautiful Bald Eagle) to top it off. We also
found a few bear tracks in some wet mud on the way back to the
rigs left at the bottom of the valley. Without incident, though,
to our dismay we did not see Mr. Fuzzy.
We reached our respective 4x4's
and began the journey back home, me as lead dog, J in pursuit,
followed by RD. When we arrived back at the last (first) mudhole I
slipped off of the ledge and slid right into previous ruts, most
likely put there by Mr. GMC getting stuck. I ended up
high-centering so I began the dig, push, pull, engine revving,
rock back and forth, swearing contest.
Here
we are after the end of our jaunt inspecting any damages we may
have sustained. And, of course, a final showoff of our rigs that
tackled MOST of the day's terrain.
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