Elbe Run Apr 2009

Where do I start on such a fantastic weekend as this? Oh, I know… we can start with me leaving the Navy base as I had duty on Friday. No biggie as I had brought my jeep and camping gear to work with me so I was ready to go on Saturday morning. It was rather funny towing the jeep on base. The gate guard asked me “is that yours”? Nope, I replied, It’s just following me. He was probably asking questions because I let the base decals expire on the jeep as I don’t daily drive it anymore.

So Saturday morning, I woke up, checked off the ship and got in the truck, which was cold with frost, changed while things warmed up, drove to a coffee stand, and pointed toward Elbe. As I was headed down there, I called Tom to see where he was.

Apparently, Ann had left her jeep on the side of the road while trying to make it to Elbe. I heard that she hit some black Ice and parallel parked her truck and trailer on a 45 degree embankment and the jeep decided not to hang around for the ride. I guess Tom and Co, along with Rudi, MaryAnn and Glen swooped in to rescue her, but she decided to tap out and head home.

I met up with Rudi in South Hill when I stopped to get some coffee. We moseyed down to Elbe. Luckily the road to the campground had very little snow, but the parking lot was a ZOO to put it mildly. Adding more monkeys to the zoo was the hindrance of not having the gate code to get into the campground. This left Mike J along with Terry and Amy kinda sorta stuck with their tow rigs ready to head into the campground, but the problem of a gate in their way hindered things. I got the tow rig good and buried in the snow, and as I was unloading my Jeep, Tom, Penny and Chad showed up. Tom got his tow rig good and stuck (we do this so no one can steal them.) And we all had a brief meeting on how to obtain the code to the ever so troublesome gate. Chad got Penny’s jeep stuck in the snow so we decided to winch that out and take it down to Nancy’s house to get the gate code. When we arrived there we found out that she was Not in town, so we drove back up to the campground with the bad news.

The decision was made to leave the tow rigs there at the gate and in the parking lot and go check on our trail. All in all the wheeling group consisted of Myself, Mike J, Tom, Penny, Chad, Terry and Amy, and Pres. Rudi with his Kids happily watching movies in the back of his Jeep. We slowly moseyed up our trail to check on it. Someone has blasted a bypass around the rock garden and we made some notes of other things to fix on the next work party. One by one we progressed on the snow covered muddy sloppy trails.

From the Sunrise, we pretty much wheeled all of the main Elbe trails except for the Busywild. We had some folks that were not going to run it in the Winter, and Chad didn’t have a cable on his winch so we declined a dip in the nasty.

Oh, Did I mention the weather? No, I didn’t. It was a PERFECT DAY to be out playing. About 60-65 degrees and sunny. Not a cloud in the sky. Though the sunshine reflecting off the snow gave a few folks a mild case of sunburn, it was well worth it. It was a top down no windshield day for myself. Others took the opportunity of the great weather to remove clothing. Some, more than others.

So we continued on, up the Alder Loop trail into the Mainline and Mainline extension. A few of us tried and successfully completed the harder lines. Terry and Amy were having a slow go at attempting the finest in what the PNW has to offer. You may not believe it, but yours truly didn’t get out of first gear or rev the jeep over 2K all day. I was doing great just moseying along.

We ran into a few snags on the Gotcha trail, most notably the downhill off camber section that we usually run uphill, caused a few problems for folks without roll cages. Chad got his first use out of his EXO and lost the paint to prove it. Terry opted for the winch to steady himself as he went down so as not to turn his XJ into the origami project that many a PNW XJ have been turned into. Further into the Trail, we ran into a vertical mud pit. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were running the trail downhill, but we were running it uphill. The climb was about 5 feet tall and in a nasty sloppy mess of a mudhole. Everyone took the bypass, which turned out to be an obstacle for most. It had 4 perfect “Jeep holes” where all 4 tires were trying to climb roots simultaneously. Some made it with class and style, others not so much. I will add that Mike J tried the original trail, and though a few half-hearted attempts were made at it, he decided not to go muscle trucking and just unleash the fury. ($10 says he could have made it). But it was pretty vertical, he could get his front tires almost on top, but just didn’t have the finesse to crawl it. So he backed out and took the bypass. Another thing about the bypass; I took Penny to school on it. This happens very rarely, so I just had to get my two cents in.

We finished the Gotcha trail, assembled on the road, and decided where to go next. To head into the Rainier Vista, or to do the “easy” part of the Busywild. Terry and Amy decided to head back to camp, so the rest of us headed towards the Rainier Vista. We got headed in and were all making slow progress just enjoying the day when we got to a huge mud hole. One by one we tackled it. Tom went through, with Rudi hot on his heels. Just as Rudi was in the middle of the headlight deep mud hole a conversation on the CB started.

Rudi: “I think there’s something under my Jeep” Tom: “No, I think you are good, power out.” –Rudi tries to drive out of the mud hole— Rudi: “No, I think there is something under my jeep.” Tom: “I can’t see anything, your good.” Rudi: “I think I broke an axle” Tom: “Nope, your still spinning, it’s good.” Rudi: “No, something doesn’t feel right. I think something is under my jeep.” Tom: “Okay lets winch you out and take a look.” — Rudi Gets winched out– –Penny and Karl drive through the hole, and pause to watch Chad—- Tom: “Karl, we need your Hi-Lift, there’s something under Rudi’s Jeep.”

We all assembled around Rudi’s rig, which had a flat rear driver’s side tire and a bit of metal sticking out from underneath the rig. “WOW” was uttered in unison. As we Hi-lifted the rig up, we found a bumper kinda-sorta “thing” wrapped around everything in Rudi’s rear axle. It looked like, well, we don’t know what it looked like but it was a 4-foot piece of steel mangled into Rudi’s jeep pretty good. We took the flat tire off and realized what the damage was. The “thing” had completely torn the entire inner sidewall out of the tire. We got the Jeep on the Spare, got the “thing” removed, and continued to mosey up the trail.

As we were getting onto the Rainer Vista at the intersection of the Swamp trail, we got reports on the CB from Terry and Amy of a “dead” Toyota and a Stuck F250 back at Camp. All I heard on my radio was “bring more winches”. Well, we MOBBED the rest of the trail. As fast as we could go we did. There was one point where Chad dipped into a hole a little too fast and had his whole rig on two wheels for a bit. He throttled out, got a comment from me as to how awesome it was, and we continued. We came across another group that had a Jeep with a broken sector shaft, but they were getting it fixed, so we continued on. I found it rather amusing as we got back onto the gravel road, that the “big motor” folks left me and Chad with our 4cylinders in the dust.

When we arrived at the Sunrise trail, Terry and Amy were well on their way to extracting the very stuck truck, and Tom moved around to assist. With enough snatch blocks and rigging we got the F-250 moving again. The Toyota turned out to be just a flat tire, which we fixed with a couple plugs and some air from Rudi’s compressor. With our good deed done for the day we all headed back to camp.

Sadly, we still didn’t have the gate code. Rudi aired up and said his good-byes. The decision was made to camp outside of camp but still have a campfire in camp. We all got our tow rigs “un-stealable” by Chad’s expert removal techniques. Then we had dinner. Steaks and brats were the order of the evening.

Chad and I set up our tents on Tom’s trailer, which proved to be a rather interesting adventure. At around 2AM, some kids in a car woke us up just railing on the motor. It sounded like my jeep unleashing the fury for a good 5 minutes straight. We could hear them talking. Apparently, they had got this car stuck in the snow in the parking lot, and were trying to show that the more skinny pedal you use, the more it pisses the folks that are camping off. After they left it was a rather quiet evening of sleep.

We awoke in the morning to another awesome day. We all had a lazy Sunday, of hanging out around a campfire eating breakfast. Wheeling was proposed but nobody was feeling motivated enough to go play. After breakfast, we all got loaded up and headed towards home.

On the way home, we decided to head for lunch in South hill. Then on towards Sultan. Right as I pulled into Sultan, Nancy called me and apologized for not getting us the gate code. Apparently the story she heard through the grapevine of misinformation was that we were all stuck inside the campground. Disaster averted, I arrived home to an evening full of chores while Ruthie whipped me because I wasn’t doing them fast enough.

Epic Weekend. Bar None. Till Next time, Karl