My official/unofficial run/non-run report.

[OldGreen]

This report will contain exactly one picture. It is the only picture that matters for my account of what happened.

The OTHER report will contain approximately 1 million pictures and several hundred hours of video. Mine is simply a tail of. . .well. . .how a wrong turn can make one hell of an adventure.

First off, here's the picture:



That is in real time. . .1:45 PM on 6/30/2014 from my office window in Pasco. Do not underestimate the power of that fact.

Now. . .to the story. . .

Will and I limped the Jeep into a turn-out high on a cliff about a mile south of Loon Lake Damn on the pavement. First chance at internet. As it turns out, the Google machine was no help at that moment, so I called me wife. . .She always calms me down. . .and at this point, I needed a good dose of calm.

More later. . .

[OldGreen]

Rewind to first thing in the morning. . .

We hit the trail from the Wentworth Springs entrance. I'll let the "other" run report cover the details here. Suffice it to say that we were on the trail by 8AM or so and having a great time.

The Jeep was WAY overloaded with gear, but still getting along pretty well. Felt a little low on power, but I just figured that the extra weight combined with the high gears was causing that (not true as it turns out).

Fast forward to just before 11AM and the bottom of Tack Box Hill. . .

Wait.. .rewind. . .to Wednesday afternoon while I was packing spare parts. . .

Axles. . .unit bearing. . .steering linkage. . .u-joints. . .electrical. . .all snugly in their spots. For the spare rear drive shaft, I had devised a clever way to attach it with a hose clamp.

Back to the approach to Tackle Box. . .Long story short, I twisted my rear drive shaft in half on a climb I had no business on. No problem, right? Well. . .remember when I said that I devised a way to attach the spare??

Devised, yes. . .executed, no. . .

So, there we were centered up between the Wentworth Exit and the Loon Lake Exit with ONLY front wheel drive.

I'm sure a lot of other detail will come out in the other report, but I want to focus on what happened when no one else was around. It was just Will and me and the Jeep in front drive. . .on our own.

The decision was made to drive out through Loon Lake without the benefit of the rear wheels pushing. Toby and the Lenzke crew would follow me to the staging area and then rejoin the group. Will and I took off ASAP because we knew it would be slow going. But. . it wasn't really. Other than the inbound traffic, we made decent time. Said traffic allowed Toby and Marc to catch up just before the Granite Bowl.

While we were alone, EVERY rig that was coming up the hill asked us if we were OK and offered assistance. EVERY ONE. Even when we were just sitting in the Jeep waiting for them to pass. . .they still asked. Even the ones that had beat to crap rigs blaring obnoxious music. . .

Anyway, I'll leave the minor carnage to the other report, but. . .with one winch pull and one broken passenger side window, we made it to the staging area, turned the others back towards the trail and limped up to Google Lookout. . . .

First place: No luck, call Rancho Cordova. . .
Second place: Need it for a day. . .no you can't bring it at 3PM on a Friday and still get it the same day. Call a wrecking yard in Rancho Cordova.

FREEKING RANCHO FREEKING CORDOVA is 2 hours away. . .and it is pushing 2PM. . . and I have an auto locker in front wheel DRIVE!!!!!

That's when I called my wife and the story begins. . . .

[OldGreen]

From our perch on "Google Lookout", Lori talked me out of jumping (kidding). . .

After swallowing my one and only "chill pill" of the weekend, we decided to carry on towards Georgetown and find another spot to work the internet.

That location was only a couple of miles down the road. Another, different, search on the Google revealed a few wrecking yards that were under 2 hours away. One of them. . .uh. . .J and L I think. . .was called. He had drive shafts stacked up like cord wood for $75 each and was 1.5 hours away in a town called Antelope.

I also posted up on NAXJA.org's Sierra chapter to see if anyone else had a solution. . .

[OldGreen]

So. . .off we went on the pavement. In front wheel drive. With an automatic locker. If you haven't done this before, then you should go out and try it in the street in front of your house. BIG fun.

Our route took us down Wentworth Springs Road to Georgetown. Really a nice drive under normal circumstances. Most of it is up and down along the ridgetops. . .but no internet access to be found until just before we got to the G-Town Speed Zone. Just to be sure, I pulled over at this point and took a look at my post on NAXJA.org. A few people had responded with words of encouragement. Still others tried to turn it into a tech thread and. . .what? One guy sent me a PM!!

We'll call him Tom (that is his name). Tom sent me his address, detailed directions, and an invitation to come and pick up a drive shaft in. . .uh. . .Nevada City, CA.

My phone told me that he was 1:25 away, North of Auburn, CA. This sounded like a FAR better deal than the one in Antelope mostly because I wouldn't have to take the time to change the u-joints. So. . off we went.

Remember my front drive situation?

WELL. . .imagine that program buy on 15mph switchbacks going first DOWN a big hill and then UP the other side. In traffic. . .pretty spooky but Chuck did a great job of keeping between the lines. In fact, the turns at stop signs on city streets were the hardest part.

After Auburn, we mounted I-80 for 15 miles and then another few on 2 lane county road. . .and then back up the mountain through residential switchbacks to Tom's house.

Tom was a peach of a guy. . .he even let me use his garage to change out the u-joint. We were back on our way in no time!!

Because of the distance we traveled away from the Loon Lake staging area, we realized pretty quickly that going back in that way wasn't going to work, so we decided to head over Donner Pass and down to the lake through Truckee and Tahoe City. . .Down to Tahoma and back out the Rubicon Trail to Rubicon Springs. We figured we could meet up with the group there and camp out with them after getting in a little solo wheelin'.

We had a BLAST on the drive. Will and I chatted about the terrain and the situation and stuff in general while cruising the high country on CA Hiway 20 and I80. When we stopped for Gas in Truckee, I decided that we needed to BEAT the rest of the group to camp. We left CA89 (Lake Tahoe Parkway) and turned on to the McKinney Rubicon Springs Road at 7:09PM.

Once clear of the pavement and the residential areas, we moved. . .uh.. .rather quickly up the trail in an attempt to get to camp before it got too dark. Still in front of us loomed a big chunk of the 'Con including going down Cadillac Hill.

Needless to say, we rolled into our camp spot at 9:00PM. Chuck, new drive shaft installed, performed flawlessly on both the high speed and low speed sections. Cadillac pointed downwards in the dark(ish) was a little spooky but we cleaned it without issue.

Safely in camp, we quickly realized that the rest of our crew was nowhere in sight. . .odd. . .where could they be? Well.. .it was now dark and we needed to be off the trail. Up went camp and down went supper. We left the BBQ and PPX with the rest of the group along with our beloved Carne Asada.

Cold dogs it was. . .

Anyway. . .we got a good night's sleep, made a little camp fire (Rubicon Springs is private property so you can do that), cooked some bacon, had some coffee and sat around chatting.

Will said, "Hey Dad, why don't you try the CB one more time." I shrugged and walked over to the mic. Toby answered on the first call saying that they were at Big Sluice. The band was back together in about an hour.

Here we converge with the other run reports. . .Eventually running back up Cadillac Hill and off the end of the trail. Will drove us out, we had a margarita and ribs/steak in Tahoe in preparation for the 800 mile journey home. Chuck never flinched. . . .