Big Dogs Offroad- Main Jambo: Putting the armor to the test.

Man, oh, man. Where to begin?

As I told Josh F. on our way off of the trail, "None of this is your fault". We endeavored greatly to confirm our understanding of the different rating system utilized here. I'm accustomed to the color code system: Green-Blue-Red-Black. Simple. There was a numerical system 1-10. We were told that 1-3 were little more than fire roads. So 4 should have been around a green, green-blue maybe. Without foreshadowing too greatly, I pressed every bit of recovery gear I owned into service, multiple times. I'll add some pictures to aid with the narration.

This first one is obviously out of sequence chronologically. But I did get 'rocked' almost as soon as we started the trail. The obstacle then was a boulder-filled climb with portions that were deeply rutted. At two points, it took some extensive spotting to position my long wheel base in such a way that I could maintain traction and still clear the mini-mountains rising out of the path of travel.

What happened above was just inattention on my part. I had to thread through some of the trees back there which made me think I was more of a downhill skier navigating the slalom than an offroad enthusiast. Anyway, I went ahead to help give Josh a hand as a large rock had become lodged between the transfer case and a portion of his frame (I think). So we get him squared away, I jump back in and start driving without really taking in my surroundings. And then I stop driving. Not intentionally; I just no longer was in much contact with the trail. So I got out to see why not, and Josh was able to snap this pic. That is the truth. I wish instead that I had decided to be a bad @ss and pose to show off my flex. But honestly, there was no time for flexing on this trail. I will have so much more respect for the number "4" in all future dealings. Sure, 5 is what people usually use as the determining integer of whether or not to round up. No one respects 4. Well, "4" kicked my @ss this weekend in ways that I will describe shortly.

 So I don't know if it is a secret or not, but I mistakenly thought that Big Dogs Offroad was their own park. They are an event management company and they sponsor/promote weekend outings complete with professional trail leaders. I don't think there's a labor union or anything for trail leaders, but these folks don't appear to be your run of the mill attendees who got polled 20 minutes prior on whether or not they felt like taking the lead. Their rigs were purpose-built and impressive. They knew the trails, and our guide for the #4 group could coach just about any idiot (this guy) through some gnarly terrain without incurring any body damage. I'm not gonna sell myself short; I can drive. But there were times where my instincts said, "No 'effing' way", but I listened to JC nonetheless and he brought me literally millimeters from disaster and right through.

 So Josh pointed out that there were some pretty built up rigs in our line up group. You know, sometimes guys scale it back some the second day to have a more relaxing trail ride. This was my first day down there, but some folks has been there since Friday morning for the first trail rides; so, you  never know.

 Now, if he was in our group, I'd have definitely had some more doubts. I just thought it was a pretty cool setup.

 Just some shots of the lay of the land and giving the scale of how many trucks were out there. This was primarily a Jeeper crowd, with a few Broncos, Rangers, Tacomas, and the occasional 4Runner thrown into the mix. We were the only two Nissans on the trail. One group had a Frontier, but that was their DD that they just used to transport some additional gear down to the event. They didn't put it on any trails.

 So there were 4 guys riding in this Jeep behind me. Everywhere that I struggled, they made it look effortless. They had suffered some mishaps the day before. They were driving with a Toyota radiator. There's had exploded yesterday. There was also a fuel leak, and I heard some talk of an overflow reservoir containing more fluid than the primary reservoir.

All the same, it was a beast. And then, inexplicably, it went bust. They departed our group about an hour into the ride with a busted rear shock mount. As they limped along out of sight, there Jeep still looked like it could have handled more.

 Right now, during a more calm moment, I snapped this photo of our little convoy headed down the trail. I was looking forward to the descents as gravity has a way of dragging a truck along; whereas, I have to fight for every foot on an incline.

 So the blue tape on my grab bar is very telling. I decided to keep this selfie to recall a story. The "mistake" that I made, according to JC was in trying to avoid a boulder, I fell into a rut and was kind of high centered on this climb. Now, I've shown the readership how to high center on a peak of a sand dune (See my Moab entries), but how exactly does one high center, while still climbing? Well that's just how big of a gradient existed between the various ledges we were climbing. So my winch cable was largely spooled out from my Scrubgrass recovery. Jumped out, hooked up the controller and spooled out some more line. Before I could get my tree-saver, JC had already looped the clevis back on itself and told me to pull. JC is a DC Homicide Detective, as I later found out. We don't correct JC or make JC wait. So i jumped back in the cab and hit the lever for "In" and hit the gas. Up and clear and started recoiling the line. This is probably the first he's looked at my truck up close. As I went to disconnect the winch controller, JC says to me, "You should leave it hooked up. You'll probably need it again." This was probably the third time I'd been hung up, but the first that I had needed a winch for. So I had some painter's tape in the truck from work. I decided to make a quick, break-away attachment so that I could either operate it from in the cab or take it down and use from another position if needed.

We were trying not to hold up the rest of the group since few of the other trucks were having as much difficulty as we were. Otherwise, I might have had someone get some footage of the recovery work. It was a bit stressful being the weakest link, personally, but I think the saving grace was that I did have all of the beneficial recovery equipment and new how to quickly access it and use it.

 So I mentioned not encountering any body damage. I did however suffer some "Accessory Damage". The solar panel got crunched against a tree. The bed light on this side also got pushed out of position, but I was able to bend it back to where it needed to go. A front light mounted on the bull bar popped open. I don't think it ever contacted anything, but the jossling was so violent at times that I think it just literally shook the housing open, which I later was able to smoosh back together.

 This photo is not long after I popped my winch cable. We were coming downhill after a relatively calm section in the trail. It was a tight "S" slalom with trees, at the bottom of which was a tree that had been taken out, leaving just the 6" thick stump sticking about 8 inches out of the ground. The shorter wheel base vehicles were worried about getting a tire puncture on the sharp portions of the stump. I was mostly concerned about being able to make the "S" in general, as the slopes were soft and dropped off a bit precipitously on either side of the trail. I took the middle section of the "S" a bit too wide and when I tried to swing around to exit, I, of course, ran long, plowed my driver side wheel pass the stump and then slumped down essentially onto it. With the trail now eroded as it was, it was hard to tell where the stump was. I thought I had overshot it considerably and was just in a soft section unable to gain traction. I got the tree strap this time as JC was well ahead and attempted to winch myself laterally back up and onto the trail to complete the S. The truck heaved forward and right about a foot, the winch strained, stalled, and then "Whap". It wasn't the violent recoil that the literature describes. In my haste, I actually had not put anything over the line as I didn't think it was a recovery which was going to potentially invoke the breaking limit of the setup. This was, of course, wrong. All that happened was that the wire bird caged and unraveled as it dropped peacefully to the ground. It was the most disconcerting thing to see the manifestation of one's offroad confidence literally unravel. I now had a 100+ lb paper weight installed on the front of my truck. The ability to get myself out was all tapped out.

By this time JC made it up as he knew I was going to have trouble. We pulled down the new Xtreme Hi-Lift from the hood and looked for a suitable jacking point. As we know, my rock rails deflect under direct load. They proved unsuitable. We next used the fairleads from the winch as a jacking point and lifted the front end. Meanwhile, we had hooked up one of my recovery straps and linked it to a Jeeper's recover strap. Yes, this is embarrassing. I had to be 'recovered'. Anyway, once my front end was up and over the stump, I got snatched backwards, unhooked, and continued forward.

With each calamity, it seemed one or two drivers would depart from our group. I don't know if it was reluctance on their part to get caught up as we had, or just frustration with our slow progress. I repeatedly assured the remaining drivers that as soon as we got to a viable departure point, my intent was to exit the convoy so as to permit the balance of the group to continue without as much of an encumbrance. But each time I said this, folks would respond that recovery was a part of wheeling, and that we were no trouble. The four guys in the one Jeep (before it broke) had said that it was good entertainment if nothing else. Well after the winch break, we stopped for lunch. And a couple more stated they might be leaving soon, but they assured it was not owing to us. They had plans for earlier in the afternoon and wanted to be off the trail in time.

Josh was going to stay, but he suffered some setbacks too that had him rethinking continuing. We decided that a few brews instead of a few more bruises was more appealing and that there was no shame in ending our day a bit early. But to do so, we had one more major challenge before we could take the bypass back to camp. It was probably a quarter mile, downhill, rocky slalom entirely lined by trees. I mean, entirely. At one point, I literally placed my red snow plow indicator on a tree, and took a fortuitous shift of a rock to the left to keep from reforming my front fender. It was THAT tight. And we both made it out unscathed and unspotted. I got on the radio to Josh and said something to the effect of, "We definitely took our lumps and had our @sses handed to us, but what we JUST did, that stretch back there? That took some serious driving. And we just wheeled our asses off. I don't care what anybody says!"

Well, JC was actually standing next to Josh's truck as I came down the last stretch. I didn't know anyone else would hear that boastful little diatribe. But JC looked up the hill to me and applauded and said I was right on.

 So we limped our way back to the campground. There were a few obstacles, but none were particularly bad. Neither of us needed any spotting.

 The loose wires are from my unfinished light rewiring project. I was to work on that this weekend, but I decided at the last minute to go wheeling. So I just left them out. This shows where my one light rattled apart and my winch line ll snapped up.

 Chilling at the ObiKrash camp at Site 6.

 I took a picture of this 4Runner for Steve. Big Red needs to look like this.

 I didn't want to promote alcoholism by taking a photo, but we went into town and Meredith informed me that Josh had never had Boone's Farm when we saw some in the refrigerator case. Well, as we're standing there reminiscing, I decide that I'm going to rekindle my affection for the Blue Hawaiian and also get Josh his first sampling. At that moment, in walk about 3-4 of the guys from the trail. I'm thinking they are getting ready to razz us for getting Boone's Farm (in addition to the beer we were picking up). Instead he immediately challenges us, "What color are yall getting?!" I retorted back, "Well there's only one Blue Hawaiian and I intend to drink it." (No one really knows the flavors, just the colors).

"Well, good, I'm here for the last yeller ones". (Fizzy Navel). So, in the middle of Gore, VA, there stood 5-6 men, debating which of the flavors were their favorites and ensuring that each had equal access to the limited supply...of Boone's Farm. I cannot make this stuff up.

We enjoyed our Boone's and then came back down to the main clearing for the Jeep Rollover and other activities. We encountered the more built up rigs from our trail group. The one female companion immediately shouts to us about how we missed the craziest part of the trail. My response was that it was probably for the better that we missed it so the group could enjoy it. More of her cohorts start coming up. I'm thinking they're going to give us crap about either holding up the group or chickening out. I could only describe the conversations that follow as kind of an incredulous admiration for our grit in continuing when we were so clearly not cut for the trail we were on. The one guy who was probably the biggest 'fan' of us calls his buddy over, "Hey Chase, THESE are the guys I was telling you about."

"So what, you've been telling people about how lame we were? I get it. We were outclassed on that trail."

"Well, I was telling him how y'all had no business on that trail, but then, I couldn't believe the stuff y'all were still getting through. There were points where I said, 'There's no way in hell. There's no way.' And it took, some trying, but y'all were getting it."

Another guy walked up and asked had I been paid yet.

"For what?"
"For using that front receiver to plow the trails flat for everyone else behind you"

In general, if I can't climb it, I'm going to push it. That's pretty much how Veronica is setup.

One of the guys that had razzed us a bit earlier acknowledged that I had made it off the trail cleaner than he had. During a portion where we were still with them, he sheered a rear door handle pretty much clean off. My truck was just as wide as his Cherokee and longer, and I had not a scratch from that same section.

 We posed for this picture feeling a bit better about our performance out on the trail. The guys were all saying that they started out about where we were or even closer to stock, and that coming to this even year after year is how they eventually got build up to where they are now. One guy, visibly intoxicated, described why he was without a Jeep this year, because his approach is that he'll destroy a rig to prove he can get over or through something. His rationale, is that if it can't do what he wants it do, he doesn't want it anymore.

 This happens at pretty much all organized offroad events. So here is a picture of it. It happened again. Are you surprised?

One final departing shot from Cove.