I met up with Roger, Judy, Nicholaus, and Brian for some trail runs. Roger, Judy, and Nicholaus are fellow Jeeper's who also took off roading lessons from Let's Go Jeepin'. My friends Matt and Chanin also rode along with me and took a lot of these pictures.
This is Nicholaus in his Grand Cherokee. The Grand has a 4.5" lift and he runs 31" Super Swampers.
This is Brian, who is currently stuck on a hill on the green trail. Brian also drives a Grand Cherokee, but he has a 2" spacer lift. Brians original coil springs flex like crazy, but his lack of ground clearance left him high centered on this hill. However, Brians Grand also sports the 5.2 L V-8 which makes his Grand a very capable off road vehicle. He let me drive it around on the sand hills and it sure is a nice engine to have in an off road vehicle.
This is Roger and Judy in their TJ. They are running stock height with Super Swampers and they get around the Badlands just fine.
Here is a group shot of the three Jeeps that accompanied me on this trail ride. Brian is working on getting his sway bar links secured after they had become loose.
Brian makes his way up a rock ledge on the green trail. This is a challenging section because to the right of the picture is a 30-40 foot cliff. Everyone made it with no problems.
For the first time in several months, the creek at the Badlands was not frozen. We took advantage of this and made our way through the creek on the green trail. Here I am taking a corner in the creek heading for the tubes.
I decided I would try the tube with the more difficult drop off. Last year I had gone through this tube without problem. Here is an overhead picture of me dropping the front end out of the tube back into the creek. It was a pretty sharp drop off, and I knew I might have problems clearing my rear end.
Well, I did not check the depth of the fall off and I paid for it. The picture below shows me creeping my rear wheels towards the drop off. I was trying to take this as slowly as possible in case I hit my rear end on the tube. My engine and the engine fan were in the water at this point. You can see the steam created by the hot engine being in contact with the cold water.
When I dropped the rear wheels out of the tube, I landed pretty hard on my rear bumper. It appears that no damage was done, but I was stuck with my rear wheels hanging in space and no front locker to carry me forward. Nicholaus got to try out his winch on the trail for the first time. Go to Attica, IN - The Badlands - 2/10 for more pictures of me stuck and my friends working to get me rollin' again!
After we made our way out of the creek, we took some time off for lunch. We then went to the quarry for a little while and played on the rocks a little bit. Nicholaus is trying to make his way up this hill. At this point the trails were starting to thaw and it was very slippery. Unfortunately, no one made it up this hill during this run.
Here is a pic of me trying the same hill.
I was able to make it this rock face despite the slippery conditions.
Here I am trying a short section of the pink trail. It was not that technical, but it was hilly and had some good off camber sections.
It would not be a complete trail run unless somebody with a Super Swamper rolled a tire off the rim, and this day was no different. Nicholaus took the casualty today, and we all pitched in to get the tire changed.
