Big Bear 2013

     Our Big Bear trip was a ton of fun as always! A huge THANK YOU! goes to Tom who once again let us camp on his property in the area!

     This year we has 13 rigs in attendance with 2 of those being guests. Eleven rigs ran the Holcomb Creek trail while two rigs while not feeling quite up to the challenge (no shame in that - always good to know your vehicle and abilities!) ran Jacoby Canyon.

     We arrived at the trailhead about 10 minutes late where we had our drivers meeting.

     The first obstacle - the "Gate Keeper" or "Rock Garden" proved to be the most challenging of the day. Matt F., our trail boss and leader in his built TJ rock crawler was the first to get hung up by a boulder on his rear diff which took a number of trys to get out of but was finally accomplished under his own power. The next stuck was by Tim G., in his stock TJ Rubicon. While he made it further than last year, he ended up taking a winch near the end of the section because he had gotten high centered. The final stuck on this section was our guest Matt in his nice 1953 Willys flat fender when he slipped off of the rocks and ended up stuck on his diff and spring perches. After a fair amount of rock stacking and balancing of weight, he was eventually freed to continue up the trail.

     Around lunch time at the second rock garden, we ran into another group headed the other way. They had one rig with a broken u-joint but fortunately, they had parts and were able to get going. While they were finishing up the trail repair, SOT stopped for lunch.

     The Good Lord was definately watching over us as we had very little carnage. The worst of it was Mike T., in his rock crawler XJ. He ended up breking off the upper two bolts on his left rear shock. He limped it back to camp after finishing the trail where he removed the shock completely and drove home carefully. Next up was Erin P., in his rock crawler Chevota when he had a minor electrical issue. This was at the very begining of the run and was quickly fixed and he had no further issues. The last was Matt F., who also had an electrical issue that was discovered after the run. Apparently on Friday while respooling his winch cable, his negetive battery connection was a little loose which added extra resistance and melted the terminal quite a bit.

     All in all, it was a great run and we look forward to doing it again next year - or sooner!