Thursday 9/17/2020

Mike is leading today. After the issues we had following the trail maps, he decided to make his own trail. We again entered from the north (no $20 fee) by Hurricane Airport, and quickly found a trail cutting to some fun stuff. 

We called this trail Mike’s Metal Mayhem, it actually took in parts of (I think) Bzzackwards (5), Sand Dune Way (NR), Double Sammy (7), Milt’s Mile (7), Nasty Half (9), and TNT (9) but don’t quote me. We were doing pretty good  until just before Double Sammy,  my steering was getting noisy, so we did a quick check and found one of my ram lines loose, got it tightened and added fluid (thanks Mike), and then we got into Double Sammy, and I chose a poor line and next thing you know my sway-bar overextended bending both the arm and link and taking out the inside wall of my front right tire…

So we found some shade and had lunch, before tackling the repairs. After lunch we had to advance my Jeep forward as the spare was hanging 10 feet in the sky over a rock ledge. We actually made good time once we carved out the bad link and arm strapping the other arm to my left front coil-over remote, a couple of bottle jacks and 20 some minutes later we had the tire changed and were rolling again, but we all decided it was time to bail and hit the lake as (you guessed it) the temps were rising fast. Damnit! I really wanted to conquer “The Chute.” 

After cooling off at the lake we headed back to camp to plan for the next day. The biggest question was can I continue to wheel Julia? It took the ride home to decide, we came to wheel, so I’d keep at it…

Mike’s Metal Mayhem Part 1
Mike’s Metal Mayhem Part 2