Trip report for the lower level green/blue group, Saturday October 19.
So I'm sure you already know from Rich's reports we got a little bit of a late start Saturday, so around 10ish the lower level group of the day hit the trails. The group consisted of:
Chip and Melissa Woods, member and guest, '04 TJ on 33's
Vitaly Beckkerman and his friend Andrew, member and guest, '01 TJ on 31's
Terry and Sally Dunlap, potential members, '10 JK on something metric
Ed and Shannon Salas, members, '05 TJ on 35's
We left the parking lot with the intent of just wandering around with no real destination in mind. Hit the Rausch Creek website and print out a map to follow along :)
We started off on green B to green 1A to blue 1 then back to green B to blue 2 past Frog Hole. Because of the rain I suppose the water was up and it was difficult to tell exactly where the bypass was, so with some slow going and staying way to the right we made it by without taking a bath.
We stayed on blue 2 all the way to Pole Line, ending up on green D. We sort of went in and out blue 2 , really just in and out of the bypass's and generally made our way south past Crawler Ridge and decided to head down the 101 trail, which I think has two entrances. The 101 was a little challenging for the newer drivers, and due to a bad spot (sorry) we had to put a strap on Vitally to get him out from between a rock and hard place. We continued along the 101 trail, passing by Cemetery, and came back out onto green D, where we decided to stop for lunch near one of the food plots.
It was while we were eating when most of the excitement of the day happened. There we were, eating, chatting, you get the picture, when a couple of regular pick up trucks from one of the local mines came down trail D. They stopped to chat for a moment, when all of a sudden Ed starts hollering "fire, fire" and pointing to the hood of the lead pick up. We all headed for our fire extinguishers while my wife headed down the trail as fast as she could away from the burning vehicle. The driver opened the hood letting air get to the flames and sure enough the whole area around his air cleaner was burning. Three or four extinguishers made short work of the flames, and the owners puttered around under the hood for a few minutes then hooked up a chain to the burnt vehicle and towed it away. The best part was the company name on the truck that caught fire. "Explo-Tech, explosives experts and demolitions" or something very similar. Yaaay, a burning explosives truck :) It was empty, but amusing nonetheless.
After lunch we continued south on green E to green 25 past Boot Hill and Tombstone generally heading towards Lake Christy. We turned right onto green S1 to green S to another right onto green 21. This was probably my favorite trail of the day. It was long, scenic, had a nice challenge or two, and it is a great beginners trail. There was one spot that involved a little rock stacking for Vitally and Terry, but nothing to terribly difficult. We ended back up on green S and took that to an area where we could stop and take a look at Lake Christy, which surprisingly did not have anyone playing around in it. We continued down green S to Quarry and headed down there to check out the scenery. Ed and I did the one small loop down at the bottom, where I needed some spotting from Ed to get around that one stupid rock that wouldn't cooperate and stay under my tire.
At this point we opted to start making our way back to camp, which we did via green E to green D and passing Crawler Ridge again where we turned on to a short stretch of blue 2 to bypass a deep mudhole at the intersection of green D and Pole Line. Good thing because there was hydro locked JK sitting there as we passed. From there we took Pole Line to green B and headed back to camp, somewhere along the way picking up Rich's group as well. Back at camp my wife got out of the Jeep to unwind, Terry and Sally called it a day to set up camp, and Vitally and I headed back out with Rich for another hour or two.
All and all it was a great day, nice and relaxing, with a nice mix of trails and good company. I'd like to extend a big thanks to Ed for being tail gunner for me and handling a good part of the spotting duties.
Chip Woods