2008 Georgetown Snow Run
From Gold Hills Posse 4x4 Club
Eric, Mark, Brendon, and Keane brought our rigs and were joined by Larry and Cole in Cool for an old fashioned snow wheeling adventure. The plan was to develop a plan on the way. :) We talked about heading to Hell Hole. We talked about heading to Wentworth Springs. We talked about heading to Wrights Lake. We never really seriously considered that we wouldn't make it to Ice House Road. Unfortunately, pictures are scarce because I forgot my camera and both Larry and Mark brought theirs with dead batteries. Mark got a couple that he'll have to post.
The trip was pretty uneventful to start. There were some pretty good tracks most of the way. We started getting into the deep snow and I was disappointed that Eric was leading us up well established tracks and wasn't using half the road. I let him know and he promptly got out of the tracks and slid into a ditch. When he got out of the Jeep to hook up a strap the snow was waist deep.
We had to make a trail at one point when a small snow drift covered the road, but other than that the trip was pretty uneventful until the cattle guard. The tracks ended entirely and a large snow drift covered the entire road. Eric took the low road around and ended up sliding right up to the sign at the guard. At this point a solo rig caught up with us and pulled Eric off the sign. The rig was a CJ5/7 hybrid with some custom work. Shortened CJ7 frame, lengthened CJ5 body, full width axles, triangulated 4-link rear... well set up. He took off and we continued on slowly behind him. At this point, the snow got deep and soft fast. We started having to do a lot of tugging to make progress. We Mark was essentially pulling Brendon along at a few points.
We caught up to the solo rig and he was buried to the frame on a down hill section. We spent probably half hour pulling him out. We decided that if anyone was going to be able to make progress it was Eric. His huge, ultra wide tires and relatively light rig might be able to pack it down for the rest of us. No such luck. Within 100 yards he was buried. We dug him out and at one point there was so little traction that he wasn't hung up on anything but was spinning all his tires and not going anywhere. We decided to turn around.
Just under three miles from Ice House. We turned around and headed up. I had to drag Brendon a few times, but we didn't have any real problems.
On the way back, Eric decided that Mark was going too slow for his taste. I didn't see the passing lane but he did. Fortunately, there was a guard rail. Unfortunately Eric rubbed up against it. Guard rails are tough. Tires are not.
On the way down we decided to stop at Uncle Tom's Cabin because I'd never been there and the day was still relatively young. By the time we pulled in. Eric's tire was completely flat. We took a short break and started work on the tire. Fortunately, Brendon had the patch kit that he'd won at a Posse event a while back. The hole in the side wall was at least an inch long and took somewhere between 4 and 6 plugs to patch (2 of the plugs may be floating around in the tire). We aired up the tire and it held, but in the process I discovered Eric's latest attempt at gaining more horsepower. Rather than using a K&N or some other performance air cleaner he had decided that no air cleaner would allow for the best performance. :)
The tire held and from there we headed home. Overall it was a great day. Lots of snow, lots of fun.