So day 2 was hanging out waiting for the rain to pass and a friend to show up, once he showed up we ran jackhammer in 19 minutes hitting the hard lines, not the race lines. From there we went up and down “jacks back” down jack north, over to bender alley, down bender alley and up wrecking ball.
Wrecking ball is a trail that has my number. That damn waterfall just fucking sucks lol. Last year on wrecking ball I broke my damn front Eaton e locker and then broke my main leaf.
This time I just had to winch but man, I want that waterfall bad and it just fights me.
After that we walked kings Veto again, it was late and not something we would want to even attempt so late.
Here we are at the top of jack.
After that we went back to camp to have make dinner and sit around the fire. Around 10:30 we got a call from our buddy and his dad that had a broken leaf on their trailer. So we loaded up my F550 and my buddy’s trailer (the one who’s already with me) and went to rescue them about an hour from the lakebed.
We took my bun trail welder and welded the leaf and ratchet strapped it up.
Got back to camp around 1, unloaded everything and got to bed by like 2am.
Day 3 was KOH OG13 course day. I wanted to start by 8 or 9 because it was going to be a long day but didn’t start until 10:39am (we wanted to time ourselves) our last buddy arriving was leaf spring trailer shopping for the broken leaf so that’s why we started a little late.
So we had some ground rules for us, stay as a group. Yes, we are “racing” the OG13 first ever king of the hammers 2007 race course but we don’t have the comms or support to handle breakdowns alone. So we stick together. Rule #2, we don’t take “race lines” over the years hammer trails have had burned in “race lines” from racers avoiding rocks to get through trails quicker. We enjoy rock crawling and while we want to finish as fast as possible it’s not at the expense of avoiding what we like to do, rock crawling….
Rule #3 no dilly dallying. Again, not racing but also not trail riding, so minimize stopping, taking breaks, bullshitting on the trail.
So we hit the lake bed at 10:39 and are off.
At 10:49, 10 minutes in, our buddy has a seized brake caliper, had to take it all apart, try and unseize it, all in all, we start moving again at 11:27. We get to the final turn off for outer limits (first rock trail) and it seized up again, this time we plug the hard line. I welded up some brake unions making them a plug. Quick and easy fix, in the end we lost a total of about 50-55 minutes between both stops.
We head up outer limits and I think for me personally I kicked this trails ass. Others kicked my ass but this one I moved quick. I had to stop for a minute as I bent a beadlock ring and hammered it into place. No real time was lost as no one was behind me holding them up. We did spread out a little on trails.
From there dirt roads to go get to the top of aftershock, so we go down aftershock, down sunbonnet, up devils slide and up hell to pay.
Going up devils slide
I thought sunbonnet and aftershock were a little more difficult then usual. I had to winch once due to a stupid line choice resulting me getting high centered.
Going down these trails in my rig is interesting, gravity likes to put the hummer where gravity wants, going up trails I am going against gravity so I have more control of where the rig goes.
We take the desert around the mtns, go up the sand hill, and to the top of sledge. We go down sledge, sledge has been tore up for years now, and it still packs a punch even going down it.
Billybadass411 going down the sledge plaque line.
I had a near scare flop going down sledge but luckily it stopped before going any further.
From there we went up jack, jacks back, down bender alley, and up wrecking ball. Up until this point it was one of the best wheeling days ever. It’s about 7pm at this point? I am back at the bane of my existence, the wrecking ball waterfall. I am dreading it, we are so close to finishing and I don’t want a major issue here. I try taking a different line and as I back up, I smash my back window…and here I have a literal mental breakdown. I’m not proud of it, but I came unglued and probably I haven’t come unglued like this in 10 plus years. I think it was just a LONG day, with minimal sleep from the previous night with the trailer rescue, etc. all my anger came up. Originally I was going leave Friday because I had a prior commitment Saturday night. To accommodate others I said I’ll stay one more day and leave Friday night, knock 4-5 hours out of my drive and finish it Saturday AM. I know, trail days have the unexpected…but the late start due to no one’s fault and my hatred for night wheeling and now freaking out about when I’m going to leave, the broken back window, I lost it. So I winch up the waterfall and rip my fucking brake line. Came unglued a bit more. So in a rush I grab one of my homemade brake plugs, unplug the wrong hardline from the master in my raging fit of anger, and then couldn’t get it back in. So I plugged up that line and the ripped line. With 2 brakes we head down claw and back to the lake bed finishing at 9:02 pm. So all in all it took us 10 hours and 23 minutes.
Got to camp, had to pack up, eat and at this point I was exhausted from the little sleep the night before, I wasn’t going to knock out 4-5 hours. So I slept from 10:30 to 2am, started up the truck, by the time I got off of Boone road and on the highway it was 2:30am. Drove all day, got home just before 6pm Saturday night.
So the takeaway was that it was still an amazing trip, slightly hiccuped at the end. The hummer did amazing. No real carnage that I have seen yet, each night I got under my rig and checked for any issues and there weren’t any. I do still have to get under my rig for the last and hardest day inspection but no real carnage other then a window I need to replace and a brake line. She took a boat load of abuse and kept asking for more.