Towards the end of #1, when you were climbing the rock wall, a group of FJ's go buy. Yellow one, then my blue jeep (mostly behind the trees) and then a silver FJ. We did poop shoot and then also went up Isabell.
With my small lift, and 33's, it was not too bad to get almost to the top of izzy, but then it becomes insane. you can see on this map how far a normal jeep can get ...
But the last 352 yards is a whole different ballgame.
The upper portion of the Lake Isabel trail was completely wiped out during the storms last year. There used to be a cool old log bridge up there:
From a couple years ago.
And this is almost the same area after last years storms. The white lines
show where the end of the bridge used to be.
And this is the land slide from the trail that was a few hundred yards past the log bridge (crossing of May Creek).
The photos don't do justice to how much was washed out. Sure different from the overgrown, narrow Jeep trail.
I remember reaching the very end of the Lake Isabel trail a few times, and even a hike up to Lake Isabel herself.
Reiter gives me the willies. It's a fun place to play and pretty close to my house. But I have a 65-70% damage rate for all the times I've gone wheel'n up at Reiter. It's rare I don't damage something. Last time I bashed my control arms and control arm mounts on "hidden" rocks in the trail and needed to replace all my LCAs and straighten and weld/reinforce my control arm mounting brackets (both on the frame and axle).
Total damage from Reiter for me:
Shattered transfercase
Bahsed LCAs and bent LCA brackets
Dented rear corner of body
Bend rear exhaust 90 deg back under axle
Dented low-profile skid plate (though not too badly)
Caved in engine oil pan
Bashed front fenders on trees
T-case linkage problems (dropped skid plate for field repair)
Broke side mirror
I'm sure there is some stuff I'm forgetting and this doesn't include any of the damage to any friend's Jeeps.
Suffice to say I'm a bit gun shy when it comes to Reiter. It's a cool place but, oof. And the dumb thing is, the trails should be this hard and I can get thorough most of them without needing a winch. But there's something about that place that it gives me bad mojo.
Wow, maybe I won't venture to reiter then. At least not til I'm at 6.5" :2thumbsup:
Hopefully I can finish everything I want to do to the WJ by the end of this summer, and maybe even get started on my next project. I need to find a REALLY good summer job.
Anyone wanna hire a 19 year-old who's willing to work long hours for jeep parts? :laugh:
I'll still go up to Reiter. . . but it just makes me nervous. There are a lot of easier trails up there. And there are some really difficult ones. The slick, slimy off-camber sections of trail don't help. Nor do the buggies on massive tires that chew everything up. But I don't really mind since it's an awesome place for those types of buggies and there are plenty of other trails for lest built rigs in the area:
I ran the same trail with my TJ on 32" tires and a 2" lift. It leads to the Rock Garden where I gingerly needed to make my way around the very edges since the main routes through the Rock Garden were WAY above my driving abilities and capabilities of my TJ. I did need to winch up one climb but after that everything was good. Made a dumb move and got hung up on a something (I think it was a beachball sized rock) that was hiding in the mud. Rather than have a spotter I kept trying to rock back and fourth off of it. Ended up denting my oil pan.
Having some good rock sliders is a good idea as they'll probably get used. And watch it. The trails hide a lot of stuff that can jump up and bite your rig, like rocks.
BTW, if you want a trail map I spent about 4 months, 80 hrs, and several GPS runs at Reiter collecting trail data and designing a trail map. Just download it from my website in the "Maps" folder:
It was good enough that the WA State DNR wanted my GPS data. Pretty complete info. Designed to be printed on 11x17 paper. Just take the PDF file to Kinkos or Office Depot. Printing costs ~$2 and they'll laminate it for you for another ~$2.
Here are some shots of what the map looks like. The downloadable PDF file has MUCH better resolution than these images so get that instead.
Map Front
Map Reverse
.
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