I'm
gonna' do it or die tryin. When you here these words do you get
the impression that you've met a person with lots of resolve? I
met such a guy in Montrose Co. His name is Terry and he works at
the local 4x shop called Mcpherson's. Terry and some of his friends
have at least two hobbies; one is Jeepin' and the other is trail
building, for which the four wheeling communities can be thankful.
Die tryin' has
been the source of conversation around the campfire for the last
couple of years.
"It's a great trail! Have you been there?.... Me neither,
but I'd like to go sometime."
Well "sometime"
just came. I got a chance to go. Mike Westphal from the Chicago
area and his bud, Dave, came to Colorado for a family vacation and
brought their jeeps. We picked a day that was good for all of us
and ok with their wives; Wednesday. I had been to All4Fun the week
before and mentioned to a couple of guys that we were going. Fortunately,
Peter Fogal (who is a member of the local Montrose club) said he
would go and Fred Perry from Clemson 4 Wheel Center in South Carolina
said he'd go, too. Peter brought his son and Shawn from Tuffy
Security Products. What a great group!
The
pre-arranged meeting was at 8am wednesday morning at Mcpherson's.
Out of respect for these folks, if you want to use this trail ask
them how to get there. They have spent a lot of time building not
only this trail, but others and they also have built a relationship
with the local BLM folks. So to protect these relationships, the
directions are to go to McPherson's.
We headed west
down some dirt roads and into a dry wash. Seems to me that many
good trails begin with "start at the dry wash". Well,
this one starts right away; rocks everywhere. There was some Swamper
scratching but nothing very noteworthy until about the third or
forth obstacle. It was me, and I was just a little left of the line
on a pointy rock. I thought I would turn right, locker skitch, and
drop. Most of the obstacles on this trail really only have one good
line. The drop was about three feet and the landing was on something
hard. I got out and the entire front end was sitting on that nice
JKS tie rod and the factory drag link and my steering skid left
me with my tires dangling. The steering skid was OK, but we opted
not to fix the tie rod or the drag link. I did have replacements,
but so early into the trail we all figured "long trail - let's
see how long they will last".
The
next predicament came up less then 25 yards later. Our leader, Peter,
has a YJ with the Black Diamond XCL coil kit and 38's. The rock
(roughly a block 3x3x4 feet) had it's position in the middle of
the trail with really no easy way around or over it. Right next
to an even bigger odd shaped rock, the space between these and the
boulders (larger than semi's) that made up the boundaries of the
wash looked narrower then our rigs.
Peter went up
the middle . He worked that rock hard for a long time and finally
got over it. It was at this point that we got to see what Shawn
had. Shawn also drive a YJ with the XCL kit, with 36's and an automatic.
What we learned is that the distance between the big rocks and the
large boulders could only be measured in dimensions of wow,
gasp, and nice job.
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