Wheeler's Thread

[Hank]

Went out and wheeled Saturday with @Tetten. Invited 4 other people and they all bailed or just straight up rejected my offer... @AssBurns.

Hit some rocks and washes in Stoddard Wells. Turns out there are some gnarly rocks out there. With the rain a few weeks ago and very light travel, it was crazy loose and 4 foot boulders were constantly shifting and rolling around while we were tying to drive through. Make for some hilarious entertainment when you weren’t the one getting hung up on them. 37s are on order. I would have loved to have my diff and axle an 1” higher. Only had to pull winch line once for @Tetten on a crazy two step ledge that we didn’t think was possible to begin with. also nothing broke on either truck. Damn luckily or just that damn good.

 

[AssBurns]

Went out and wheeled Saturday with @Tetten. Invited 4 other people and they all bailed or just straight up rejected my offer... @AssBurns.

Hit some rocks and washes in Stoddard Wells. Turns out there are some gnarly rocks out there. With the rain a few weeks ago and very light travel, it was crazy loose and 4 foot boulders were constantly shifting and rolling around while we were tying to drive through. Make for some hilarious entertainment when you weren’t the one getting hung up on them. 37s are on order. I would have loved to have my diff and axle an 1” higher. Only had to pull winch line once for @Tetten on a crazy two step ledge that we didn’t think was possible to begin with. also nothing broke on either truck. Damn luckily or just that damn good.

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Damn I regret not going, but I had to take care of things at home this weekend. I was gonna go to glamis but decided I need to take care of some things before Christmas and heading to Ocotillo for 5 days for New Years.

Is this place worth going back to? Looks like a ton of fun

 

[Tetten]

I was kind of familiar with this place from 2 years ago when I came up here with a work buddy and did some of the rock gardens. After that trip I checked out the area on aerial imagery and saw there were a bunch more. This has been my first chance to get out there with someone else to check everything out that I could see. Invited some folks out there that said they were interested but ended up bailing, which was probably for the best, 2 of the rock gardens are pretty extreme and pushes the limits of our trucks in their current setup. I doubt the other 2 people we invited first would have been comfortable in those canyons.

The only time people really come up here is for the annual High Desert Roundup jeep event. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves, we didn't see more than a dozen other vehicles out there all day and most were prerunning the race routes.

We started the day on a rock garden I was unfamiliar with and turned out to be the best out of all of them. Rocks up to 36" that push and roll around when you try to put a tire on them. After that we spent the next couple hours exploring the other canyons around the mountain some by foot and others by vehicle. We could drive up most of the canyons that looked doable, 1 of them was too steep and rutted out from from storms so we bailed out halfway up. After we finished up my route we came back to an obstacle called the Pumpkin Eater and did it at sunset. The ledge is a bit harder than it looks and we both had to do different things to get up after spinning tires a couple times.

The next day I was modifying my route and learned that HDR calls the 2 extreme canyons the "Pumpkin Eater trail" and does them as a single run during the event. I think it worked out well doing 1 extreme canyon in the morning and doing the other in the afternoon, spaced out the grueling parts of the trail and allowed more relaxed crawling during the middle of the day.

If we ever go out there again it should be an even better time, I've got a route set up to go up 6 rock gardens of varying length/difficulty and down another 2. I also found another rocky wash on aerial imagery to check out.

 

[4runner DOA]

I was kind of familiar with this place from 2 years ago when I came up here with a work buddy and did some of the rock gardens. After that trip I checked out the area on aerial imagery and saw there were a bunch more. This has been my first chance to get out there with someone else to check everything out that I could see. Invited some folks out there that said they were interested but ended up bailing, which was probably for the best, 2 of the rock gardens are pretty extreme and pushes the limits of our trucks in their current setup. I doubt the other 2 people we invited first would have been comfortable in those canyons.

The only time people really come up here is for the annual High Desert Roundup jeep event. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves, we didn't see more than a dozen other vehicles out there all day and most were prerunning the race routes.

We started the day on a rock garden I was unfamiliar with and turned out to be the best out of all of them. Rocks up to 36" that push and roll around when you try to put a tire on them. After that we spent the next couple hours exploring the other canyons around the mountain some by foot and others by vehicle. We could drive up most of the canyons that looked doable, 1 of them was too steep and rutted out from from storms so we bailed out halfway up. After we finished up my route we came back to an obstacle called the Pumpkin Eater and did it at sunset. The ledge is a bit harder than it looks and we both had to do different things to get up after spinning tires a couple times.

The next day I was modifying my route and learned that HDR calls the 2 extreme canyons the "Pumpkin Eater trail" and does them as a single run during the event. I think it worked out well doing 1 extreme canyon in the morning and doing the other in the afternoon, spaced out the grueling parts of the trail and allowed more relaxed crawling during the middle of the day.

If we ever go out there again it should be an even better time, I've got a route set up to go up 6 rock gardens of varying length/difficulty and down another 2. I also found another rocky wash on aerial imagery to check out.
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I was watching through the IG stories yesterday. Looked like a ton of fun but out of my scope of experience. Have to recruit you guys for a couple "mellower" crawling runs after I fix my rear locker and regear my spare 3rd. I'm determined to get the experience and become more comfortable to do shit like this but it's gonna have to wait a couple months.

 

[Blender]

I was watching through the IG stories yesterday. Looked like a ton of fun but out of my scope of experience. Have to recruit you guys for a couple "mellower" crawling runs after I fix my rear locker and regear my spare 3rd. I'm determined to get the experience and become more comfortable to do shit like this but it's gonna have to wait a couple months.

pussy

 

[4runner DOA]

pussy

Big time. Did you know I destroyed that copper line just so I could skip the crawling trips? Kinda like @Mike_taco4x4 broke his elbow, except I wanted my rig still functional enough to enjoy some dirt in the meantime.

 

[Hank]

Damn I regret not going, but I had to take care of things at home this weekend. I was gonna go to glamis but decided I need to take care of some things before Christmas and heading to Ocotillo for 5 days for New Years.

Is this place worth going back to? Looks like a ton of fun

Certainly worth going back there. awesome place to go for a day trip. not too far and hardly anyone out there. I want to go up a few of the washes we ending up going down. One of them looked pretty challenging and the other had a side shoot that looked like a good time. I also want to see if we can finish out the a last 4th of "Pumpkin eater".

 

[Hank]

Also another thing to note, if you noticed, we both had two spare tires. The rocks are pretty sharp and will shred tires. So 1 spare is needed, 2 to be comfortable.

 

[Tetten]

Certainly worth going back there. awesome place to go for a day trip. not too far and hardly anyone out there. I want to go up a few of the washes we ending up going down. One of them looked pretty challenging and the other had a side shoot that looked like a good time. I also want to see if we can finish out the a last 4th of "Pumpkin eater".

When I was editing my route yesterday and doing more research, I read that on one of the HDR events, 3/4 of the jeeps that continued up past the "Pumpkin Eater" ledge had to be winched to the last bail out point, they had a rock buggy go up and used it as a winch point.

 

[madtaco461]

I love stoddard, but I'm mostly on the moto out there

 

[theesotericone]

Went out and wheeled Saturday with @Tetten. Invited 4 other people and they all bailed or just straight up rejected my offer... @AssBurns.

Hit some rocks and washes in Stoddard Wells. Turns out there are some gnarly rocks out there. With the rain a few weeks ago and very light travel, it was crazy loose and 4 foot boulders were constantly shifting and rolling around while we were tying to drive through. Make for some hilarious entertainment when you weren’t the one getting hung up on them. 37s are on order. I would have loved to have my diff and axle an 1” higher. Only had to pull winch line once for @Tetten on a crazy two step ledge that we didn’t think was possible to begin with. also nothing broke on either truck. Damn luckily or just that damn good.

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WTF? Nobody called me......

I can here the conversation now:

Andy, should we invite Matt?
He breaks a lot of shit.
Good point. I'll pretend I don't have his number.

Glad you guys had a good time without me but:

 

[4runner DOA]

WTF? Nobody called me......

I can here the conversation now:

Andy, should we invite Matt?
He breaks a lot of shit.
Good point. I'll pretend I don't have his number.

Glad you guys had a good time without me but:

That's okay, I stopped getting invited after Motino.

 

[AssBurns]

That's okay, I stopped getting invited after Motino.

You also constantly say how you are done crawling the harder trails for a while.

 

[4runner DOA]

You also constantly say how you are done crawling the harder trails for a while.

Hahaha. Yeah. Those trips just haven't meshed with my current plans or finances.

 

[theesotericone]

Hahaha. Yeah. Those trips just haven't meshed with my current plans or finances.

I just plan on breaking shit and fucking up my finances.

 

[4runner DOA]

I just plan on breaking shit and fucking up my finances.

I'm not sure how much more my bank account can handle. I need to recover from some of this, hence the desert trips so I don't break anything. Hahaha.

 

[Hank]

WTF? Nobody called me......

I can here the conversation now:

Andy, should we invite Matt?
He breaks a lot of shit.
Good point. I'll pretend I don't have his number.

Glad you guys had a good time without me but:

I’ll invite you for the next one. Andy and I invited two people who wanted to wheel with him next time we did a hard trail so we didn’t want a huge group, then they bailed so that’s how it played out. Nothing intentional here. We gotta test out those gnarly IRocs

 

[Hank]

Also, enjoy this gem of a screen shot of a video Andy got.

 

[4runner DOA]

I wish I could take credit for these. But @Itaro is the meme master.

 

[Itaro]

One more then:


Much love @shank