[color=009900]Big Dogs IceBreaker , Gore VA
April 23-24th 2010[/color]
The Weekend at Big Dogs Icebreaker event was one of the strangest trips I’ve ever taken.
It all started Thursday night. I was going on 4 hours of sleep from the night before, after delivering cabinets at 1:30 am. We finally left Victor about 8:15pm for a 6.5 hour drive. The jeeps were loaded and truck was overloaded (as usual).
Not long over the Pennsylvania border, I felt a quick hard vibration from the trailer and watched one of the passenger tires blow out. Within a few seconds the remaining tire on the same side fell to the same demise. The trailer jumped about 5 feet to the driver’s side as it fell onto the rims. We had to drive about a mile or so on the rims in order to find a safe spot to work. My stomach turned when I saw the carnage. I only had one spare. We had to drive Cora’s CJ7 off the trailer and even then the jack wouldn’t lift my CJBuggy on the trailer. So a combination of the High Lift and the floor jack did the trick. Mindless soon found us stranded and thankfully loaned us one of his spare tires.
The remainder of the trip was slow going in an effort to make one of the tires on the driver side last. It too had broken belts and was heating up badly.
Mindless, ETK300EX, Brian, CoraC143 and myself rolled into The Cove Campground around 6:30 am. We cooked some breakfast, unloaded the wheelers, and waited for Smike and Ryan25 to emerge from their trailers. Cora and I decided to head into town to find a few new replacement tires and planned to hook up with the group around lunch.
The weather was perfect, about 70deg sunny with blue skies. Cora and I returned to the camp site, dropped off our new trailer sneakers and we headed out to get in some wheeling.
We soon found a familiar looking buggy approaching us on one of the upper access roads. It was Ryan, he had a broken drive shaft and was heading back to camp. We decided to regroup and all meet back at camp. On the way Cora lost her clutch. The linkage had popped out. We found that the motor mounts had broken and allowed the clutch linkage to move beyond it limits. While back a camp we found that the transmission mounting bolts had stripped out and fallen out. I drilled and through bolted the motor mounts, ratchet strapped the transmission and we were back in business.
Our first trail we hit was Pennsyltukian. Its an uphill rock flow, that has become sort of a right of passage for all that come to Big Dogs. The trail is rated 8 out of 11 on their rating system. We all made it to the top with no issues but we all failed to complete the more difficult exit line. We all decided to take a ride to see the overlook but 2 minutes later while I was bringing up the back of the pack my rear drive shaft blew apart. The section that was still attached to the transfer case made its presence known quite rudely by beating on the bottom of the tub as I attempted to bring the jeep to a stop. It seems I had torn one of the ears off the rear pinion yoke and the U-joint decided to pursue its newly found freedom.
I had forgotten the proper size socket to remove the yoke so I decided to walk through the campground hoping someone might have one. I never thought an 1-1/2” socket would be so hard to find. I sure met some interesting characters on my trek.
Cora jumped in with me, Mindless fired up the Dakota, and we headed out for some night wheeling. We ran a trail named Trickle which is a long winding creek filled with logs and boulders and is fairly tight and twisty. Then Wahoo. Not very difficult, but more than enough fun at night. Especially considering Mindless and I had been up for 36 hours with no sleep. On our way back to camp we stopped to help a Samari with an overheating issue. After that we decided to call it a night.
Saturday morning started with a great breakfast, then we hit a few more trails, the first of which left ETK300EX with no front wheel drive and a sputtering motor. We pulled the Toyota over the last big log obstacle and parked it on the side of the road planning to pick it up on the way back.
We worked our way over to the area where the hold the Virginia State Rock Crawling Championships. The trail was called Insanity, and none of us had ever run it. The boulders were bigger that Jeeps, with cracks and holes that could eat buggies. Fall off your line and your day could be over. We met up with rock crawling driver and co-organizer of Big Dogs events, Eugene Rose. He was leading a group of Jeeps through Insanity. I figured I had watched enough and drove to the beginning of the trail section. When I made my way back around through the trees, I realized a rather large group of spectators had gathered. The trail seemed to run uphill which made it difficult to see the upcoming obstacles but I made it through the first section cleanly. I came up through the upper section and followed the high line towards a big drop off. While I managed to make the drop off cleanly, I became wedged between large rocks on three sides and used the winch to bump me out. Ryan and Mindless followed. Mid trail Mindless decided he wanted to relocate his front shock mounts on a rock, which forced him to quit. I pulled out the Ready Welder and he was all fixed. After talking with Eugene for quite some time we headed over to Boulder trail and then to Death Valley. Death Valley access trail was where Nicks dad rolled the ZJ last August during the Main Jambo Event. Up until now, none of us had made it past that point. As we came to the bottom of this small hill we gazed upon the Death Valley Trail. It ran up hill, and was strewn with tall, pointy rocks that were just evil looking. I couldn’t wait to see where it went. About 150 yards uphill, the trail dead ended and we started a parking lot. But to our surprise, it was almost as much fun going downhill as it was going up.
From there we headed back to pick up Eric’s Toyota, and then to camp for dinner. Chicken tacos on the NEW mini WEBER, English muffin pizza’s on the Walmart grille, a sweet campfire from Mindless’ springcleaning, and after the rain came in we jumped in Ryans trailer with the heater.
Sunday. Awakened by the sound of rain. My tent poles had apparently given out from the stress of placing a blue tarp over it held down with bungee cords. But we were still dry. Another sweet breakfast, and we set out for our last day of wheeling. Ryan left for home Sunday morning. Eric rode with Mindless, Brian rode with Smike.
We headed straight to Corum trail, which is one of my favorite trails. Another uphill boulder field filled with trees and its much wider than the others. With a trail that wide, we were able to run two or three wide all the way. Our group made it up the trail in less than 30 min, which is a huge difference from the nearly 3 hours it took a group the first time Cora and I visited Big Dogs.
From Corum we stopped at Hells Hole. It looked like a giant sink hole with a very steep exit after a deep water crossing with logs floating in it. I decided I wanted to attempt it, but backwards. All the while I could hear Eugene’s story of his wife rolling her buggy down the hill. Once I made it down into the hole, I could see how it got its name. the exit was so steep and rutted, Im not sure if I could have made it using the winch.
Across the road was Extreme Trail (ET) this was another first for all of us. There was a group working on an obstacle known as pancake rock. I anxiously awaited my turn while the guy in front of me gave it his all. Pancake rock was situated on a downhill angle, and was very under cut in front of it. There were trees very close which didn’t help. After a few attempts I managed to bump my front wheels up on it. Now the rear took some work to get lined up but with a little spotting from my friends… the Old Jeep Buggy made it. It must have been partly due to wheelbase because Mindless and Smike couldn’t get a wheel up on the huge flat mud covered rock.
Doug Bigelow, another famous Rock Crawler/Racer/KOH racer stopped by in his beat up old CJ7 trail jeep to check out the excitement. He told a few great racing stories and looked over Smikes Buggy. He gave him some good advice as well as some insight on their upcoming King of the Hammers Qualifier at Rausch creek Offroad Park.
We headed back to camp to pack up, but only after we ran Pennsyltukian down hill.
Everyone made good time packing , I fixed my busted trailer fender. (I drove over it unloading the Jeep Buggy Fri morning) Remember…No sleep! And on that same note, it seems that somehow the lug nuts on one of the new trailers wheels got installed backwards. This made for some serious
vibrations for the first 40 miles of so.
Big Dogs is such an amazing place, not only because of the awesome trails, but the campground is absolutely gorgeous. Two lakes, great scenic overlooks from the side of the mountains, and tons of places to explore.
I can’t wait to go back!
