E63
Full Access Member
Was invited to help Matt do the pre-run of this portion of a future Raptor Expedition Run.
We met in Brawley and left at 9:00am, it was already above 90 degrees and humid. Our trail takes us past several farms and aqueducts and turns into open desert. There was ample evidence of the heavy rains and flash floods. (I noticed Earthquake damage on trip out on I8 with rock slides and fallen 2 story high Hay bales too) Always different and changing, our deserts… Early part of the run, there was a lot of standing water around, we followed a previously run charted path that went on top of the levies, for lack of a better description. I am following quite a ways back due to dust and get the call to be careful, he’s stuck in mud.
Time to break out the new recovery gear, first we tried pulling him out backwards
Made things worse as we hit a wall of mud. Now strap and shackle is buried.
Here is short video:
I wanted to try the Wythe Hand Winch, thought was to use my truck as anchor
That didn’t work, only pulled my truck backwards. Funny thing – we are sweating bucket by now, 114 degrees with high humidity – not thinking completely sharp, anyway we go thru the motions to relieve tension a few clicks at a time, five minutes of this and Alain (Matt’s Navigator) say’s “Why don’t you just back your truck up a bit?” Doh!:doh:
The only shovel we had was my little POS, which was fairly ineffective:i_redface:
So the next step was to try and get my truck around and pull him from the other way. Two problems, one getting our strap off the back and getting around all that water without getting stuck ourselves.
Matt stays in cell phone contact with Connor and Outlaw, keeping them apprised of our situation (this little fact will make more sense when we get to the end of this story.) So Matt jumps in and we do some off trail blazing and are able to position truck to pull from front.
My Son Ian, braved the leeches to hook up my sling to Matt’s LCA. I am not kidding either they were everywhere, little green bastards. We use an under-rated strap to pull him about 3 feet or so before it broke. Then Ian braved the nasty water again, up to his ass, to retrieve the good strap and shackle.
Success – Matt’s Truck is fine, time to clean up and be on our way
---------- Post added at 05:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:17 PM ----------
2 hours later – we are all soaking wet with sweat, time to get the thousand flies out of our trucks and then to enjoy the A/C and open desert.
We had a blast, made good time, saw some interesting stuff on our way past the state Prison. Stopped for some cold beer by the first shade tree we found, none of the bottles broke, :smileup:but many of the caps could not contain its cargo :smiledown: Enough survived though :smiley_thumbs_up:
We made our way for the next couple hours on some really fun trails thru Ocatillo and into Carrizzo all the way to the base of the mountains. SDGE is working on a new wind farm and had graded some dirt freeways that were a blast to zoom on.
Then it was time for some high speed trail blazing with some wild blind turns with thick vegetation on all sides. It was beautiful stuff, by far the most fun.
We tried to continue the trail across S-2 down into Canyon Sim Nombre but the trail was too overgrown and unused, I convinced Matt to take the marked trail.
here is the overlook:
This piece has some tricky passages best done with outside help to guide you. I was careful as I had gashed a sidewall in this very spot on a previous journey going the other way. Trail leads down to some 100 foot cliffs where we stopped for lunch before the assault into the Carrizzo Wash.
This area is heavily overgrown with water there year round.
We decide to do a little landscape maintenance, my crappy shovel had a crappy saw inside and we hacked our way thru this enough to break it so we could drive over it.
The wash was completely different from when Noah and I had gone the other way about 6 weeks ago, the entire area was filled with this stuff:
It was like drive on field of glass, stuff shatters easily with a satisfying sound, flying everywhere. We blazed thru it 60 MPH, taking one to two foot jumps in the undulations of the wash. Lot of fun.
We came out at the tracks that lead to the Plaster City Factory, no doubt startling the Border Patrol guy seen at the back. We drove right by him and then backed in for a photo
Real Mud graphic
Minor trail scratches
We met in Brawley and left at 9:00am, it was already above 90 degrees and humid. Our trail takes us past several farms and aqueducts and turns into open desert. There was ample evidence of the heavy rains and flash floods. (I noticed Earthquake damage on trip out on I8 with rock slides and fallen 2 story high Hay bales too) Always different and changing, our deserts… Early part of the run, there was a lot of standing water around, we followed a previously run charted path that went on top of the levies, for lack of a better description. I am following quite a ways back due to dust and get the call to be careful, he’s stuck in mud.
Time to break out the new recovery gear, first we tried pulling him out backwards
Made things worse as we hit a wall of mud. Now strap and shackle is buried.
Here is short video:
I wanted to try the Wythe Hand Winch, thought was to use my truck as anchor
That didn’t work, only pulled my truck backwards. Funny thing – we are sweating bucket by now, 114 degrees with high humidity – not thinking completely sharp, anyway we go thru the motions to relieve tension a few clicks at a time, five minutes of this and Alain (Matt’s Navigator) say’s “Why don’t you just back your truck up a bit?” Doh!:doh:
The only shovel we had was my little POS, which was fairly ineffective:i_redface:
So the next step was to try and get my truck around and pull him from the other way. Two problems, one getting our strap off the back and getting around all that water without getting stuck ourselves.
Matt stays in cell phone contact with Connor and Outlaw, keeping them apprised of our situation (this little fact will make more sense when we get to the end of this story.) So Matt jumps in and we do some off trail blazing and are able to position truck to pull from front.
My Son Ian, braved the leeches to hook up my sling to Matt’s LCA. I am not kidding either they were everywhere, little green bastards. We use an under-rated strap to pull him about 3 feet or so before it broke. Then Ian braved the nasty water again, up to his ass, to retrieve the good strap and shackle.
Success – Matt’s Truck is fine, time to clean up and be on our way
---------- Post added at 05:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:17 PM ----------
2 hours later – we are all soaking wet with sweat, time to get the thousand flies out of our trucks and then to enjoy the A/C and open desert.
We had a blast, made good time, saw some interesting stuff on our way past the state Prison. Stopped for some cold beer by the first shade tree we found, none of the bottles broke, :smileup:but many of the caps could not contain its cargo :smiledown: Enough survived though :smiley_thumbs_up:
We made our way for the next couple hours on some really fun trails thru Ocatillo and into Carrizzo all the way to the base of the mountains. SDGE is working on a new wind farm and had graded some dirt freeways that were a blast to zoom on.
Then it was time for some high speed trail blazing with some wild blind turns with thick vegetation on all sides. It was beautiful stuff, by far the most fun.
We tried to continue the trail across S-2 down into Canyon Sim Nombre but the trail was too overgrown and unused, I convinced Matt to take the marked trail. here is the overlook:
This piece has some tricky passages best done with outside help to guide you. I was careful as I had gashed a sidewall in this very spot on a previous journey going the other way. Trail leads down to some 100 foot cliffs where we stopped for lunch before the assault into the Carrizzo Wash.
This area is heavily overgrown with water there year round.
We decide to do a little landscape maintenance, my crappy shovel had a crappy saw inside and we hacked our way thru this enough to break it so we could drive over it.
The wash was completely different from when Noah and I had gone the other way about 6 weeks ago, the entire area was filled with this stuff:
It was like drive on field of glass, stuff shatters easily with a satisfying sound, flying everywhere. We blazed thru it 60 MPH, taking one to two foot jumps in the undulations of the wash. Lot of fun.
We came out at the tracks that lead to the Plaster City Factory, no doubt startling the Border Patrol guy seen at the back. We drove right by him and then backed in for a photo
Real Mud graphic
Minor trail scratches
