Spring Creek 04!
What would an Edge
year be without a Spring Creek run? We
thought the 11th of July sounded like one hell of a time to
take it
back up the creek. With a nice and early
7:00 am start we met at our standard I-70 buff overlook.
It was a well-rounded group of Edge heads as
well as Scott from 4x4trails.net. We
arrived at the trailhead around 7:40am and were the first ones to make
the
ascent.
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It was apparent that
the recent rains had taken its toll washing away much of the topsoil
exposing
much more rock than usual. I made my way
up the first major climb to find a nice big boulder on the right with a
nearly
vertical uphill to my left. I took the
line high and after adjusting a couple of lines made my way up the bed
of
rocks. The famous tree was still there
on the right, only a little less soil around it! The
group followed making their way up one at
a time. Scott clawed his way through the
big hole with ease until his right rear tire dropped in the hole
causing him to
kiss the rock with his rear quarter.
Fortunately the damage was minimal, and strictly cosmetic. Art made it through that section with very
little effort at all until he got to our favorite tree section and
broke the
bead on his right front tire. Oh yea he
had a spare, but Oh no the lug pattern was wrong! Damn!
After much deliberating on how to get him up and running again,
we
decided to try to re-seat the bead with an ARB compressor.
We really weren’t sure if it would have
enough pressure to re-seat the tire. To
our surprise it got the job done and worked flawlessly!
We were underway once again with only Tracy
to make the climb. After a few attempts,
she was tired of messing around. She
backed her trusty TJ up and punched it.
No sooner than she rolled into the hole we all heard a large
“BANG”. I though oops, broken axle or
driveline. Sure enough she had shredded
her right rear axle shaft. It was very
apparent once we began backing her down the hill. Her
rear tire continued to dog track out
forcing us to use Dave’s high lift and push it back in by hand. I drove the Crusher around the way we came
up, got behind her vehicle and hooked up the winch cable to her rear
bumper. That allowed my low gearing and
engine braking to help keep her vehicle at a nice slow pace back down
the steep
section. Needless to say that was the
trip, with half the day now gone we decided to get Tracy back to town
and have
a hard earned Tommy Knocker!!!!!!! I
couldn’t think of a better way to end a tough day out on the trail! As always our group came together and
rocked! Cheers, Chris…
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