[D-Morg]

Man vs Wild 2010 trip report:


August 20th, 2010 Day 1:

We headed out of Knoxville, IA at 5:20 am Saturday morning and headed west. We ran into some very heavy rain in the Omaha area, but the clouds quickly broke giving us sunny skies. It stayed that way for most of the trip. It was sunny the entire time except for one night where we got a few sprinkles on the trail that lasted for about 5 minutes. The next morning there was a slight mist that lasted for about 30 minutes or so. The weather was amazingly nice and much warmer that I thought it would be for the entire trip.

I hadn’t been on any long drives with my new exhaust and quickly realized that it was going to be a PITA! The exhaust resonated off the pavement, bridges, and tunnels like crazy below 2200 rpm with the windows up. About halfway through Nebraska I found out that me speedometer was off by about 10 mph (I must have screwed something up with my Superchips FlashPak the night before), and I found out that I had been going 65 the whole way. I jumped the speed up to 77 mph and the rpms went up to about 2500 and the exhaust quieted down a ton. I solved that problem by keeping my speed up, but as soon as I got on the trail I quickly found out that the exhaust also blew the dust up like crazy, creating a fog around my rig. Needless to say, that is going to fixed before I head back to the trails.

Just west of Denver I must have locked up right rear brake caliper. When we pulled up to a gas station in Breckenridge, I could smell something burning. I just figured it was the car next to me at the pump, but we realized that my right rear rim was covered with brake dust, and the rim would sizzle when I spit on it…… not good!
It was too late for me to hit up the parts stores that evening, so we wandered just north of Breckenridge on a trail called The North Fork Swan River. We stayed in the same spot we did last year just past the trailhead. The spot didn’t look like it had been camped in since we had last year. There was still a small pile of firewood that we had left by the fire pit the year before! It also still had a nice view of the valley with wildflowers and a small creek running just a few yards away from the fire pit.

We busted out the tents, gear, and the hotdogs so we could get an early start in the AM.

TrailDamage.com - Swan River

[D-Morg]

Day 2:

I think we ended up waking up at about 5:00 or so in the AM and watched the sun rise over the mountains north of Breckenridge. I cooked up some coffee while Seth made us some hash browns, ham, and eggs.

After eating I went out looking for parts. It took three stores in three different towns to track down all of the parts and supplies I would need. I didn’t have any room left in my rig so Jordan and Seth were in charge of tools for the trip. Both of them pulled through big time. I think they had more tools than most shade tree mechanics own. After about an hour or so in a parking lot I got her put back together. The best part of the whole deal was having my Jeep torn apart in the Target parking lot of a VERY ritzy town. I had tools and parts laid out all over the place. A big thanks to Art for letting me borrow one of his CO2 tanks for the trip. I got a lot of weird looks every time I used the impact or air ratchet in the parking lot.

After my rig was all patched up we headed over to a trail called Peru Creek. It was a very easy trail but offered a whole slew of scenery and points of interest including a few old mines. We went up to the top of the trail at about 11,200 feet to take some pictures and wander around a bit. We ended up meeting a few guys and gals that noticed my license plate was an Iowa State plate. It turns out a couple of them went to school there about the same time I did so we shot the breeze for a little bit and then headed down to find a camp site.

For some reason we always find the good little camping spots off of the beaten path. This was a nice and quiet one tucked in the pines with a nice view of the ridges above. Theresa and I set up camp while Seth and Jordan gathered up all of the fire wood in about a 30 mile radius. We cooked up sausage and hot dogs to eat while Theresa cooked cans of spaghetti O’s and corn.
TrailDamage.com - Peru Creek

[D-Morg]

[D-Morg]

[D-Morg]

Day 3:
In the AM we cooked up some hash browns, ham, and toast, packed up and headed out to the little town of Alice. There are a number of trails in this area but we decided to go on a trail called Loch Lomond. We went on this trail last year and had such a good time we decide to go up once more. It’s a short trail and is rated as moderate in the Wells books. It must just barely hit the moderate end of the spectrum because there were stock pickups going up it. It has no major obstacles, but it’s bumpy as crap.

At the top there is a little lake called Loch Lomond that has a waterfall running into it. It seems as though this area is a local hot spot because there must have been about 12 or so vehicles at the top. We headed back down and found a different camping spot than last year. This one, like the night before, was back in the pines and right by a little stream. We cracked a couple of beers and gathered up some firewood to split before we ate. That night I introduced Theresa to fire pies. We must have cooked about a dozen pepperoni pizza pies before we hit the hay that night with full bellies.
TrailDamage.com - Long Hollow Road

[D-Morg]

[D-Morg]

Day 4:
I got woken at 3:30 in the AM by the wind. She was howling down the valley like crazy, and I was a little worried that some of the tall pines were going to start cracking. Some of the gear we had sitting around camp was getting blown about but my tent stayed solid as a rock! The thing barely moved in the gusts.

We ate breakfast and showered up before heading to our next destination, the Caribou 4wd Route. This defiantly a moderate trail and we wandered around on it for what seemed like 5 hours or so looking for a good camp site. I didn’t get many pictures of us wheeling on this trail because we were too busy trying to make it through the obstacles. There were a lot of mud covered rocks, deep mud holes, and deep standing water that hid large rocks. Jordan and Theresa held tight at one of the trail heads while Seth and I went up the ridge to look for a couple more camping spots. I ended up getting stuck in deep mud hole just up the trail. The mud itself wasn’t too deep but the approaches to the hole were a sticky 2 foot vertical drop. Needless to say, I had to pull out the winch line two different times before I got back to the other rig.
It was getting late and everyone was tuckered out, so we decided to stay at a national forest campground. We made some more fire pies and had a couple of beers before we called it a night.

TrailDamage.com - Caribou Creek

[D-Morg]

[D-Morg]

Day 5 and 6:

We woke up and cooked some hash browns, sausage, and ham in the morning mist before heading to the Brunce School Road trail and The Ironclads. We stopped at the Raymond store near the trail head for some last minute supplies. This is a cool little store that is hidden in the town of Raymond. I’m fairly sure that this store hasn’t changed in the last 50 years, so we make the stop every year.

This trail has a little bit of everything on it. It has sections ranging from easy all the way up to extreme. Last year we found a camping spot on one of the more difficult spurs that we decided to stay at again this year. The trail has a few nice little loose and embedded rock obstacles on some steep hills that are always fun. I had the sway bar flipped off and the tires aired down and didn’t have much problem. I was a little worried about Jordan’s rig making it past a few of the obstacles, but he made it without a hitch. His 4-runner is running 31 inch AT tires and has a factory selectable locker in the rear. I’m not a Toyota guy, but his rig ended up being much more capable than I thought it was. We were going to go to the plane crash nearby, but we decided not to because I was a little worried he would tear up some of his sheet metal on the trail.

We ended up staying at this spot for two days. The view from the top of the rock shelf is amazing. Each night we would cook up our dinner and sit up there with a few cold ones and watch the sun go down and the moon come up. It doesn’t get much better than that!

On the way back down I took a few poser shots, but I forgot that I had the sway flipped on. These will have to do for now I guess.

TrailDamage.com - Bunce School Road
TrailDamage.com - T-33A Plane Crash
TrailDamage.com - Ironclads

[D-Morg]

[bumzo1]

Sweet! looks like you had a great time

[D-Morg]

Day 7:

We headed up to Laramie Wyoming. In town we hit up a little hole in the wall restaurant called Fat Burrito for lunch before heading into the mountains. Once in the mountains west of Laramie we had to check out the Libby overlook and Mirror Lake. After a little site seeing we tooled around on random forest roads and trails for about 5 hours looking for a good dispersed camping site. We had two trails to go on in this area but chose not to hit them at this time. We found a really sweet camping spot by a river, but it ended up not having enough tent space. We wandered around for another hour or so before settling on another National Forest campground. We were all tuckered out, hard up for trails, and points of interest so we decided to head home the next morning.

[D-Morg]

Day 8:
Back to Iowa!

[D-Morg]

Summery:

The good:
The Jeep worked great. All of the modifications both bought and built worked amazing.
The headlamps we bought turned out to be one of the most useful tools of the trip.
The new Mountain House meals are spectacular.

The bad:
Don’t put a 90 degree turndown on your exhaust when you’re as close to the ground as I am.




……… let’s start planning for next year!!

[HeavyMetl]

Nice pics and nice trip report. I try to look at which state the license plates are from on Jeeps I see in Colorado, wondering how the adventure is going for those who make the trip out west.

Looks like you had a good time, but the comment about "hard up for trails" has be a bit bewildered. I suppose Wyoming doesn't have nearly the off-road network of trails of Colorado