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| August 29 - September 1, 2002
Russell and Beth Smith, Carol and Bob Rutchik, Tom and Ceil Curley, Alex and Sue Dentice, Frank and Sue Dentice and I (Dave Lloyd) headed out to the Dakota Territory Challenge just west of Rapid City South Dakota. We arrived on Thursday, most having started out the day before. Technical inspections are rigorous, as they will jack up a tire to "test" your locker. Trail ratings are 3 to 5+. We all rated in at 4+ or better. We had a driver meeting that evening and went on a night run. It was different and fun. The trail was raspberry ridge, rated 3+. It wasn't a really hard trail, but the darkness made it interesting. What may have made it more interesting is that most of us didn't air down and traction aside, airing down has real benefits when it comes to smoothness of ride. Friday we ran a trail called full monkey. It was a combination of full size and Kong. At the very first obstacle, a jeeper broke his rear axle, blocking access to the obstacle for anyone else. Too bad, it looked very scary, but possible. We turned around and quickly became split from the rest of the group. We eventually found our way back to civilization. In between, we had a great time getting Shane off of the big rock after he had broken his drive shaft. That was probably our biggest challenge of the day. At the end of the trail, there was the entrance to Kong. However, we couldn't go up because someone was tranmissionless at the top of the trail and there wasn't a good way to turn around and go back. Saturday we ran Iceman. This trail was lead by "Doc" a real doctor and Don the owner of the local Jeep Dealership. After Carol kept reminding Doc that his turn signal was still on, we spent a lot of the day pointing out warranty issues to Don. He laughed, but I am still not sure if we were kidding (we were). This trail featured a V shaped spot that Tom managed to mangle his rear leaf spring on. After being on his side, he backed up and moved his Jeep out of the way and went to work on removing the rear spring. We drove over it with a Cherokee to straighten it out and that worked. Later, Carol decided to park her Jeep for a few hours (she broke her right u-joint and axle shaft). As luck would have it, Carol had a spare u-joint, but not an axle shaft. Later, Don (Jeep Dealer) would take his trailer to get Carol and call his mechanic to bring parts and fix her jeep. That was great. A really cool part of this trail was Jason's Rock, which was tricky to get up onto. There is a pretty good drop all around. Cudos to Russell for making it up, considering he had broken a brake line earlier. Sunday we ran Lower Buzzworm. This trail is sometimes underwater and was pretty relentless (rock after rock after rock). I got a few dents and dings in here and we all had a good time watching the Bronco driver change u-joints on his front dana 44 (four on the trail - all of his three spares and someone else's spare). Alex cut a 4 inch hole in the side of one his tires. We changed it in a hurry and moved on. At the end of the day, Frank and Alex decided to continue on to Upper Buzzworm (i.e. they missed the turn up the hill and off of the trail). I caught them on the CB and they turned around and came back. Because my front drive shaft had such a dent in it, I needed to keep it under 40 on the highway. This worked to Alex's advantage as his lug nuts on the changed tire were a little loose and we needed to stop and tighten them. All in all, we had a great time and would heartily recommend this trip to anyone. It is a long drive, but it is three days of riding with some really great people. |
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