Joined up with my local group of TacomaWorld hooligans for a weekend of camping, off-roading, and other shenanigans. We generally prefer the riverside sites for seclusion and because they are just generally great sites.
This particular weekend we had quite a large group – I think ultimately the count was 19 total. To keep the convoy sizes manageable we split into 3 groups. Here we are staged in the parking area discussing how to divide up. For some reason I got lumped with the big tire crazies even though I’m still on 31″ tires. Not going to lie I was a bit nervous to start the run.
Aerial shot shared by one of the group members. As you can see the lineup stretches a full corner of the lot. This is why we had to divide – a full single convoy would’ve been a terrible way to plug the trails.
Jason in the foreground with 3rd gen on 35s, Pat in the distance with 2nd gen on 33s but is always ready to full send. Couple of wild men having fun on these rocks that often give trouble due to the angles and slippy surface.
Connor with his beast on 35s crawling an off-camber line that most of us can’t do and making it look relatively easy.
Another of the same truck – not really the greatest action shot, just a glamor shot since I happened to be standing there with a camera in my hands.
Pat climbing another one of those sneaky tricky rocks which shouldn’t be particularly bad but have just the right slipperiness and break over that gives our trucks a challenge due to wheelbase lengths and other math stuff.
And another rock that he found his way to the top of. This one does show another challenge of these trails which is loose dry dirt and moss in places that don’t look particularly hard but end up being deceptive.
Here are a couple shots of me driving up a typical track taken by one of the other group members. Happy to have any shots of my truck, pretty hard to take my own selfies when I’m driving.
RIP to this guy’s UTV
On the way back to camp we came across this unfortunate fella who has tipped his UTV into a mudhole. Upon further discussion, I think we found it was his dad doing the driving. And it was new. And they hydro-locked the motor. And they believed it costs about $10k for a new motor. Ouch.
Rich and Jason coordinated the recovery efforts which were not super easy due to the bog hole being several hundred feet long. They ended up doing a 90-degree pull using a snatch block connected to the roll cage which took little effort to get back on the wheels.
Once it was on all four, a quick pull with a tow strap and they were out of the hole (which by the way is the type of bog that smells absolutely terrible when stirred up). Just as we got them out, their other family arrived to complete the tow off the track.
Bonus: Wedding Crashers
Once we were back at camp for the night and happily drinking around the fire, we noticed a huge party going on at the dirt bike track just across the field. A few of us had the bright idea to crash the wedding just to see what was going on. Somehow we ended up talking with the bride and taking photos at their instant-photo booth whilst wearing silly hats.
Another photo of the silly hat crew. I didn’t get one before getting pulled into the photos but that’s alright. Congrats to Sierra and Austin on the nuptials!
