This was my first run with my rear locker, a Powertrax No-Slip. My friend Scott K. from Missouri and I met on the MadXJ website and decided to go wheelin' at the Badlands. My good friend Steve also showed up and we had a fun time in very, very icy conditions. Unfortunately my pics of Scott did not turn out very well, so I was not able to post any of him. However, I have a few of myself and Steve.
Steve is lining up a very steep rock face in the rock quarry in his Brown CJ-5.
Here is Steve making this challenging hill look very easy. As you can see from the angle of his CJ, this really is a very, very steep rock face.
Here are a couple of pictures of me climbing up rock faces in the quarry. This is the first time I was able to make it up these rock faces as it is nearly impossible without at least a rear locker and very good tires. This was especially true as the conditions were very slick on this day.
In addition to playing in the quarry, we also tried to run parts of pink trail. This was not a real brilliant idea as the trails were covered in solid ice! However, we did the best we could and the worst damage that was suffered was when Scott rolled a couple of beads of the rim. These were easily fixed with the Powertank that Santa brought me for Christmas :-)
After trying to run the pink trail, we went back to the quarry. Our day ended when Steve's CJ broke its motor mounts and his clutch linkage became disengaged. This cause quite a problem because Steve was halfway up a very steep rock ledge with the CJ stuck in gear. We tried to get the CJ into neutral, but were unsuccessful. We then hooked up the CJ's winch to my XJ, but the CJ just winched my XJ towards the ledge. I then gave my new Powertrax No-Slip locker its ultimate first day test by pulling Steve's CJ up the ledge with the CJ still in gear!!
