The weather was fine and sunny (even had to put some
sunscreen on and this is supposed to be winter), the tracks were nice and slippery due to the rain of the preceding week, and there were plenty of tracks to explore. What more could a man ask for?The Garratt
family ('86 RR), the Findley family (Tdi Disco), Paul Howarth and his father (S1 "Thumpa") and myself met at the entrance to our playground for the day. Peter Vary (4x4 quad bike) from the Auckland 4x4 Club was
there to let us in. To complete the team for the day, two trucks from the Auckland club (Nissan LWB Grand Road and Suzuki Samurai) joined us.
Our playground was the old army base situated between Papakura and
Clevedon. The land was once used for munitions storage, training exercises, and even had a prison on it at one stage. The land is primarily covered by some pretty dense gorse, except for the main metaled
roads and the tracks formed by the local motor-cross park. The motorcycle tracks had just been disced (presumably to remove all the ruts) and it was these tracks that made up the main obstacles for the day.
Due
to the deep discing of the ground and all the rain in the preceding week, the tracks were very soft and the trucks tended to sink deep if forward momentum was lost (unless you drive a nice light Suzuki). The
really steep hill climbs had been spared the discing, but with the hard clay base, these were extremely slippery.
The first track of the day consisted of dropping off a bulldozed plateau, down a steep incline, through
a water table and then giving it stick up an off camber hill climb of 60-70m. If you got it wrong, you ended up in the gorse. It took me two attempts to get it right. The other vehicles followed suit
with Thumper and the Suzuki making an easy meal of it (vehicle weight in the slippery conditions proved to be the secret of the day). Andrew G's Rangie and Andrew F's Disco made it through with a fair amount of
sideways movement, but the gross weight of the Nissan meant it had to work a bit harder in order to get through.
"Thumpa" taking the first track of the day
Nissan Safari working hard to find traction
Andrew G giving the Hankook RTO1 tyres a workout
The second track formed a loop of disced ground, again some of it on an off camber. No real obstacles here. You just had to pick the right line and give it heaps of curry. We had a lot of
fun, as speed was the essence. The excitement was heightened by the ease at which you could get sideways due to the lack of traction.
The third track was a progressive hill climb, entirely made up of, you guessed it, disced ground. The first little hill climb was the most difficult due to the hard and very slippery clay base under
the loose top. My Rangie made it up on the second go, but Andrew's RR took 5-6 attempts to make it (the advantage of a locker) and Andrew F gave up in the Disco and opted for the
formed road. Again, Thumper and the Suzuki made light work of it.
Andrew on the second hill climb
"Thumpa" making light work of the slippery conditions
Once over the first climb it was a case of keeping the forward momentum going in the soft ground. On several occasions I thought we weren't going to make it due to the truck bogging
down when you had to go around corners, but we managed to make it all the way to the top of the track without stopping (about 300m in total).
From the top, the track turned on itself and there was a hard clay based hill decent. This was easily negotiated going down, but presented a challenging obstacle as a hill climb. The Nissan
was the first to concur the hill, but not before having to work very hard at it for 3-5 minutes. The first 10m were relatively easy, but the final 5m was very slick and traction was all but zero.
I attempted the climb and made it to the crest but, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't make the last couple of metres. I decided to admit defeat and back down, but in the process ended
up off the side to the track.
