5/31/2021 trip report Rausch Creek Memorial Day weekend.
I had completed the new ZJ project that was first seen at 2 club meetings ago and decided to make the shake down trip for it this weekend. It was great!
Troy hitched a ride and we left my place about noon on Friday. Drove through 4 hours of various levels of rain that did not give up. We pulled into the park about 4:30 after a sheetz stop and all of the big trailer parking was full so we grabbed a spot closer to the office entrance and hung out in the trailer. Took some naps and decided to cook some dinner, Scott hawker sent me a message he had arrived and we let him know we were in the trailer. Had some beer and scott headed to a hotel as we for sure were not going to have a fire in the pouring rain and he was not keen on setting up a tent.
It rained all night. At some point I heard a familiar 12v cummins sound arrive, and then a 4.0l jeep unload. The next morning I confirmed it was Brett and Ashley that had arrived and toughed out the rain, set up a tent and camped! Unfortunately by the morning they had had enough and probably made the call due to the forecast to head home and they did. Joe pulled in and Scott made it back to the park. At some point Jeff G arrived also. We were not excited about rain wheeling but we loaded up and forged on.
Saturday Jeff led and we all followed and were happy to run easy green blue stuff in the wet. Good day of wheeling and by about 2? Or so the rain cleared up and it was tolerable. Scott got tied up on Krawling for cops trail and had to winch down the trail twice. Silly roots found his crossmembers and some of the rocks were a bit much for his wheelbase and 33’s toward the end of the trail. Jody and Chris also joined the party that night with their new to them enclosed trailer setup and mahindra buggy. We had a nice campfire and shared some old stories with new club members. Scott decided his jeep had a new noise so he headed home The rest of us enjoyed the clear night for a few hours without rain finally
Sunday more rain and continued shifting to bad forecasts came but we forged on. Highlights of this day were more green and blue trails on the NE property. We did run by crucible which i talked Joe into running his samurai based buggy though. He flopped at the entrance so we used Jeff's jeep and a snatch block to right him. The rest of the trail wasn't too bad and Joe had fun! No damage to the buggy other than a hood dent. We headed back for some lunch and dry trailers. The rain cleared back up about 4 so we went back out, this time over towards CV trail 5 area. At some point I stopped to investigate snapping sounds while turning right and Jeff and Chris lost Joe and I. We said we would meet back up at camp in the end. We ran trail 8 and hills and bowls on the way out, and took the long way home. Just as we were crossing the comp course headed back to the parking lot I heard a faint horn beep and looked back to see Joe stopped. His front track bar had broken in half. We went back, got a plan, ran a few hundred yards to the trailers for some materials to scrounge up a trail fix with steel tube and ratchet straps to get him back to his trailer. All and all the fix went well and it actually couldn't have happened at a better time or place. Would have been a shame to fail 5 min into the next wheeling trip! Also noticed at this point my rear diff was draining itself as I had peeled the back cover a bit.
We headed back to the trailers to wait out some rain that started back up but then cleared. Another nice campfire to close out the trip.
We all headed out in the morning and made it home without issues.
