3-28-15 VAXC Wheel Away Winter- Flagpole Run

I'm a good ways overdue in penning this post. I was not originally planning on going, as I've run a good chunk of Flagpole previously, but an unexpected series of adjustments to my wife's schedule meant that my son, my dog, and I were going to spend another 30 hr shift alone at home intermittently napping and binging on Netflix. I had previously wanted to do some work on my truck. So at the last minute, I decided to load him and my dog up and go and visit the crew from VAXC at their campground. I had not yet made up my mind as to whether we would do some mild wheeling or not. (We did).

There are actually some paved roads near us that are worse than the trail following all the freezes and thaws that have littered the streets with potholes. So I knew the little guy was tough enough to handle a bit of light jostling.

Below are some pics and commentary from the day:

So Maddy is a lover...and a licker. On these rides, she normally has the back row entirely to herself. Although I generally trust her around my son, I always watch the two of them together. And what I know of her, she would love to lick him incessantly...kinda like she's attempting to do here to me as I took the photo. With him in the back, I had to jury rig a means of securing her in the shotgun position. This was mostly successful, except she insisted on positioning some part of her body over top of the winch controls pretty much the entire day. She also knocked the HAM radio remote head loose on more than one occasion. 

 Some of the trucks that were out that day.

 Carrie's yellow bus made the trip.

 I was not the only pickup. I didn't really get to talk to these guys in the Ford though. When we broke for the mid-day point, they split off with another group.

 Pretty nice setup all t he same.

 I aired down at their base camp. The rest of the crew did so trailside.

 Our leader for the day, Donny.

 This guy likes to match his outfits to his truck. At least that is the snap judgment I will offer at this time.

 He pretty much looked like this most of the day.

 It was about a 3 hr drive down to the trail head without a peep. He got out with me to air down the tires. I carried him in the Baby Bjorn at that point and bundled him up in my jackets. Then we did a diaper change and I warmed up a bottle which he was not particularly interested in. So I put the cap on it and saved it for a reheat later that morning. The nice thing I enjoy about the truck setup now with the solar panel and the dual battery setup is that I can run household appliances even when away from home and without the convenience of mommy.

Truck cab selfie.

 Josh didn't bring his dog; so Maddy and Bella have still yet to meet. He didn't bring his girl or kid either. But our trucks hung out all day. We also prattled on and on over the radio for the entire morning like long lost school girl friends. I try to make it out to these rides so that Josh has someone to talk to :)

Actually he's a really good guy to wheel with and it was a major deciding factor in scrambling my family down at the last minute to make the ride.

 Needed Steve's selfie stick. It sounds dirty and derogatory.

 I think this is either called Big Meadows or Great Meadows. There are a couple of 'meadows' there. I've previously been to this spot and had a photo of Veronica solo.

 There is a larger lineup shot that I should probably steal from someone else's page.
VAXC actually did a good job of staging this such that 3 groups of about 30 trucks were all able to traverse this area without getting all bogged up on top of one another. Yet everyone was able to convene at this spot for the midday round up.

 These were taken up at the actual Flagpole knob.

 Nature.

 And then I put my truck in front of the Nature.

 A couple of attempts at getting everyone looking the same direction.
Can't really tell here, but we had matching outfits. I'm big into wearing my blaze orange out on the trails these days. Then I had my gray ski pants on in case we encountered snow at higher elevations. J had orange pants and a grey top that matched my pants. So we were top and bottom opposites but in the same colors.

 There was a group that was staying to camp again and then a couple of other day-trippers. I ran into the day-trippers at the Sheetz as  you leave town.

 I parked a bit away from folks so as not to block access to the free air at this location. This was the one point in the day that the little guy got fussy. On the trail he went from not wanting any milk to suddenly downing a full 8 oz serving (which is a lot for him). Well no more than 2 or so hours later, he was ready to do it again. And he was very expressive about this intent. This time around, I didn't re-deploy the full bottle warmer setup. I went and got 4 oz of hot water and mixed with 4 oz of bottled water and then the formula went in. Resulted in 8 oz of mommy temp formula. 15 minutes later, the boy was content and we made the 3 hours back home without a peep.

This was us- all smiles- when we got home and did another diaper change.

Mod Night and GPAX Shocker Run 8

There's so much to get caught up on. It has been a busy few weeks leading up to this weekend's GPAX Shocker Run #8.

I'll try to let the photos tell most of the story:

I went to work completing my bumper. I got pulled over after the last run, in part, due to my tag not being illuminated and not breaking down my speed quickly enough upon entering a town. Dodged a ticket, but thought I should get a jump on finalizing the rear end.

The Rear View

These are salvaged column-leveling plates from a prior construction job

We got a snowfall and I was anxious to play. Primed it and rolled out.

 The shackle mounts came later. They were a bit of an afterthought.

Welded and primed

 I narrowly averted disaster. In this orientation, the top turn tabs of the shackles would dent in the tailgate upon lowering. For now, I have them inverted. I also oriented the shackle mounts generally in this orientation because I rarely heard the front ones clang when on the trails. They are less likely to pivot left-to-right, then they would be jostled up and down if the mounts were oriented vertically.

I was doing very well for fuel storage, but I had very little water for long term overlanding aside from a couple of bottles that I would keep in the driver side door pocket and then the case of water I would customarily pick up on the way out of town and sling into the bed. The latter approach took up a fair amount of real estate. After buying two cheaper plastic jerry cans only to find that they didn't fit in the Smittybilt carriers, I opted to get the blue metal can offered on Amazon. Once I confirmed it fit in the Smittybilt carriers that I already had for gas, I ordered one more carrier and have it mounted to the utilitrac. It didn't get used this weekend due to the subfreezing temps. Any water out back would have frozen.

Sustainability and other buzz words

 And then my truck went Solar. But like for real this time. The old panel was a 15W panel. This is a 160W panel. It will be a game changer for us in terms of what equipment I can run and for how long.

FORCE Club Mod Night

Steve got a new bumper and winch for the 4Runner. Unfortunately, the bumper got misdirected by a few thousand miles and the timing of its delivery very nearly jeopardized the readiness for the trip. Since I am such an enthusiast and had already volunteered to do whatever it took to see it mounted and Steve participate in the run, we ended up scheduling a work session for the Wednesday night prior to the run. I got home at 4am Thursday morning.

 Fortunately a snow storm was projected to hit our area and likely cancel work or classes for much of the region. But when no snow had materialized by 4am, I thought the closures were doubtful and I'd have to show up to the office as an absolute zombie.

I had thought we would need to mount the winch to the bumper and then hoist the combined assembly to mount. After we did this test fit, it confirmed my suspicions. So we had to drop the whole thing down, ready the winch and remount. And there were some difficulties with fitment and hole prep that we had to scramble to resolve while short on time and tools to accomplish. But we got 'r done.

 The snow did ultimately materialize. About 8 inches by us.

My truck did fine in it, but now all 4WD are created equal. Sorry bud. I did a recovery on my street. I went to try to help this hapless soul while on the way to my sister's place to drop off some sand, but the occupants had abandoned the vehicle some time ago, simply leaving the hazard signals to blink incessantly into the night.


The Main Event: GPAX Shocker Run #8~ 3-7-15

 The day finally came. Well, I was even more anxious for the day before actually. I took the day off of work and hung out with the kid before taking him to Granny. Then the plan was for 4 of us drivers to meet up just north of Baltimore at a 7-11 off of 695. Steve was a bit late running back to get his GoPro and picking up his codriver; Cruzer got held up a bit actually reattaching his drive shaft of all things. Phillip and I were on time. Our group stopped at Mud Hook Brewing, a brew pub in York, PA on the way up. Then when we got to town, we hung out at O'Neals in Pine Grove. Sadly, it was dead in O'Neals this year. There was like no one from GPAX there for the night before festivities. Rob T. from VAXC was about the only other familiar face there. I'm actually glad Steve was insistent on pursuing other activities for the drive up. If we had wagered all of our entertainment bets on O'Neals, we would have been sorely disappointed.

 The morning got off to a not so great start, mainly because I did not quite have my bearings when it came time to get to the park. I didn't trust where the GPS was taking us, and as a result, I lead our group, and a couple of stragglers who joined up with our convoy as we left the Pilot gas station on a bit of a wild goose chase. Fortunately, we ran into Breslin on the road, and I said, "We should follow that guy". And he happened to be on Channel 19, heard us, and waited for our group to make one last U-turn. And it turned out my GPS was right. So there was some confidence erosion in following me on the trails :)

The vehicles from our group lineup. Missing LowBrau. So first up is Lopez

Saric

Dukes of Hazzard

Kerr's Predator [formerly Big Daddy Don't Call me Titan (because it was a Tundra) Kerr]

BCRProp

Rebel GD and family

Breslin greeting the attendees

Rob T with VAXC

 So I was made a trail leader for this ride since I was bringing my own motley crew up anyway and there was a general shortage of trail leaders as it was. Not even 5 minutes into the trail ride though, I managed to leave the trail. Combination of inattention and deceptive depth of the snow. I took a turn too shallow and the trail punished me for it. Tried engaging the lockers and they only intensified the slide further into oblivion. I called the other drivers over and used it as a teachable moment about self-extraction, winch line safety, and the like. We were back underway in about 5 minutes.

LowBrau's new bumper and winch

We sent someone down into Crystal Lake. 

Maddy stretched her legs during the lunch break.

Selfies while people got unstuck. They kept letting me get too far up the trail.

 The paths we took were not taken by any other groups. So for the first 2/3 of the day, everything Veronica encountered look like this and was between 12"-24" deep. In places where it got deeper, I would plow forward until I just was starting to lose all traction, ease here back a couple of truck lengths in reverse, and then ram forward another 20-30 yards until the snow thinned out some.Veronica was an animal that day and I'm not sure that anyone behind knew how hard she was working to knock down the snow to make it passable. Sometimes it got to be a bit much and I'd have to take some time to free her up.

 Tripod selfies.

 It was well after lunch before we even encountered another group. Here was a bit of a traffic jam where two groups had come together after one had encountered a protracted recovery attempt.

 We later ran into Cruzer and Breslin just as they were completing repairs to Breslin's drive shaft U joint(s). We followed them at a good clip back to the parking lot. Lots of fun, Tokyo drift moments on the GoPro to sift through.

 Our group lineup

 With drivers

Now, two of our members departed for the day at that point. Since a few sections of the park were closed, we were advised that the other property would be made available to all of us for free. It started out great. We figured the other groups might be anxious to go over and explore in the morning and that it would be freed up for a brief jaunt in the afternoon. The above photo captures the essence of the difficulties we encountered.

Some areas of the park didn't exactly coincide with the map. A lot of groups entered or were were present at about the same time (including Jeepers). The ensuing cluster of too many vehicles without clear direction made finding a straightforward way off of the property very challenging. We would often U-turn or divert down another trail only to encounter a group coming from the opposite direction. Then the snow started. Heavily. And we were at a point where seemingly the only way out was a daunting Blue-rated climb in the snow. Cruzer made it up no problem with the Gorilla. I was challenged mightily, but Veronica got the better of the climb while running open-open the whole time. Saric was not as lucky despite a very valiant effort (and some prior prowess in running another climb in REVERSE). I ended up deploying both winches (front and back) to drop enough line back to him and enough ahead of me to anchor to a tree and extricate him. Dukes was able to get the climb after a handful of attempts. It required the full functionality of the extended travel afforded him by the Titan Swap and the burly bounding ability that the 35" BFGs graced his truck with. The rest of our group found an offshoot while awaiting the extraction and was able to link up with us just beyond the climb. We got out just in time to make it to the raffle where yours truly had his numbers called a couple of times for some heartily appreciated prizes.

All in all, it was a great day out on the trails.

That evening, we went to O'Neals for dinner. More folks made it out that evening. Then there was a not-so quick jaunt to Snitz Creek Brewing in Lebanon, PA. From there, I opted to head home and get a jump on photo selecting, chores, blogging, and the start of the work week.

That's all I got.

Until next time.