Mile 238,000: Trail report - Lefthand canyon.

The friday before this ride when I was getting my tires mounted, I met up with a man named charlie who informed me he was going on a trail ride the next day, after some jeep talk. We headed up lefthand canyon in Boulder, CO. The trail was mostly clear of snow, I made off with only one real bit of trail damage....will talk about at end of story.

Notes:
The mercedez pictured did NOT go on the run, after some serious coaxing with the driver (guy in brown with gelled hair, seen on far right in picture of squeeze)
The tank-looking thing is an old swiss army military vehicle. Carries approx 10 people. Awesome rig, easy to roll though.

Here's the start, us at the 'staging area' for the trail... buckingham park. About 12 rigs were all up on this trail.





Some Pics of us heading up the starting area, before old mother hill.



No pictures of old mother hill or me attempting it, but I'll tell the story: I made it up the first 'half' of the hill (from what I could recall), fighting for every inch of it. When I got to the second little (only in distance) climb, I had a bad approach and decided to try again from a different angle. When attempting to move over to the right side of the trail to try again, I got stuck with my wheels in ruts, apparently stuck on my long body and kinda high-centered (See: Gore). I slid down the hill about 6in, giving everyone below me a real good scare. With some clever help from a rock (thanks to a fella named Hugo), I got unstuck and got myself turned around and headed back down.

Here is a poser pic at the start of mother hill:


More trail:



My favorite light:


After that, we took the branch headed down to the squeeze, 12 rigs does not fit well here, seeing as how this is a pretty popular point and three branches of the trail meet up here. The group split in half here after one group got stuck in front of some ATV's while they were parked on the high trail and had to head on down. Another three decided not to attempt the squeeze and headed back on down the other branch. I actually made it up (will post vid when I get it).
The squeeze:




After that, we continued to follow the trail out to where it dumped out onto the road again. All went well in this part. Overall, a good trail that gave me a lot of experience.


Gore:
A couple scratches on my wheels, nothing to worry about.

A couple dents and dings to my transfer case skid, nothing to worry about.

A scratch on my unibody, just took some of the old dirt off of there. Did you know those things are shiny silver?

The biggie: I dented in the driver's side of my gas tank, which cracked it. It's leaking pretty fast so I'm going to try to replace it this monday.

Things I've learned:
Traction is the magic word! It doesn't matter what lift you have, it matters what kind of traction you have, followed in a very close second by armor.
ARMOR ARMOR ARMOR IS KEY! get your underbelly armored up good and tight, DON'T FORGET THAT GAS TANK!

Bring a sandwich or other easily edible hand-food for lunch, chili in a thermos seems like a great idea at first....but you'll be wrong.

Funny quotes:
"Come on guys, that mercedez is a military vehicle! I have Dana 60's and 1.5mm on the body, full skid plates underneath!" "Yeah, but it's just too pretty to bring up here."

"Hey, Jon (me), you've got a leak over here." "It's not leaking, it's just marking its territory!"

(over CB) "Hey charlie, what's the plan for lunch?" "Eat on the fly." "Do you have any idea how hard it is to eat chili on the fly??"

Until next time,
1,000,000 Miles Strong.