Rausch Creek April 24-25

[Jeff_G]

The trip started out bad, doing a last minute bolt check on the trailer I broke a spring hanger bolt, I thought that the trip was done for me but decided to do a one day down and back trip. We left the house at 4am and arrived at Rausch at 9 hitting the trails shortly after that. With Mark in the lead we headed out on green/blues and found ourselves on the first black of the day Hot Rod Ridge, after we survived that we went on trail 2 towards Crawler Ridge stopping along the way to watch a group of Cherokees play in the deep water. There were a lot of vehicles playing on the ridge with several trying their luck at the V notch with no luck. Waiting out turn first Joe then Mark made it look easy. We filled the rest of the afternoon with lunch and more blue trails ending the day on I think trail 1A which is a black. I was amazed at the capabilities of my Jeep and horrified at my willingness to follow Mark on the black trails. All in all a fantastic start to the wheeling season. I ended up leaving just as the campfire was being started.

[Wingman]

The campfire was wonderful, Jeff! We knew that we were on borrowed time with the impending rain so we burned it good and hot in Chris/Jodi's super duper fire ring! The main precipitation held off until about 10:30p and everyone sought out their respective shelters.

It rained steadily through the night and right up until 7:30a. There was a bit of a chill in the air.

We got signed in, talked with Bernie for a bit, then headed to the northeast property where we found N1, N2, X2, X1, X4, 35, 32, 36, 34, 31 blue and black, 40, BFG Hill, Devil's Den, and back to camp for lunch where we bid farewell to Scott, Chris & Jodi. The sun had emerged and it was warming nicely.

Joe/Megan and Mike/I went back out and hit some up/downs of Stairstep. We came across an awesome little GPW whose group bailed on him. We became reacquainted talking about our builds. We had met 6 years ago on my Willys maiden RC voyage! After some fueling issues on the GPW, we decided to head back to our trailers taking 3b, 3a, 6, and the double-bump on the comp course.

Loaded up and farewells in the parking lot and all left on their merry way. Winter has been officially shaken off with a drama-free weekend of RC Ice Breaker rock crawlin' !!!

[hawker]

Thanks Jeff and Mark for providing trip reports. You were too gentle on me. A bad driver behind the wheel of a pretty capable Jeep Gladiator results in body damage. At least no one broke axles or lost transmissions.

Some of you 3-4 years from now will be looking at used JLs and JTs. Know that they have a lot of aluminum to help achieve government efficiency requirements. I have faced aluminum skid plates. My latest experience at Rausch resulted in my doors getting gouged, not dented like steel. Of course I would have a wicked dent, but gouges?

I am trying to attach a photo, but I suspect the resolution fails to show the gouge very well. I am also posting it on the Facebook group, but don't expect better resolution.

Hint: club members. The current limit of attachment size is 384 KB. Sounds kind of dated. Bump it a magnitude?