Saturday morning, myself, Warren & Steve, Billy &Connie, Adelaide & Addie, Lyle, and Scott Hill drove up to Fawnskin together. After breakfast we met up with another group going out with one of the local rangers. After airing down, 19 vehicles set off to explore 3N02.

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As it turned out, the original reason for coming out, to clean up the trail, was not needed as the place looked in really good shape. However, driving fire trails all day was not to everyone's taste, so after lunch, several of us chose to run John Bull trail instead.

After splitting off from the main group, 7 Jeeps (YJ's and TJ's) started up the trail. It became obvious pretty quickly that this was going to be tough. The trail's fairly easy, but 1/2" of snow on top of thick ice made things difficult. Lyle went first, and even with Teralow, 4:10's, and ARB's he had to fight to find a line.

Eventually he made it up, and it was my turn. I got over the rocks, but the hillclimb over ice got the better of my carb, and every time I stopped to try a different line, it would quit, and I'd have to start the engine again. So after 10 minutes, I broke out the winch cable.

After I made it up, we watched the other Jeeps coming up. It took a while as they were all basically stock, with either open diff's or a Trac-Lok. Had me and Lyle known, we may not have gone, but it worked out ok.

We made it through ok to the "play area", and took turns running through the pond spraying mud everywhere.

Unfortunately, on the way out, one of the YJ's lost his brakes and nailed a tree about 20mph! The driver was ok, but his rig is trashed. The frame is tweaked on the right side and his whole drivetrain shunted forward, breaking the motor mount and snapping off his oil filter. If he had the 6 cylinder instead of the 4, he would have put the fan right through the radiator! We helped get him down to the road, and left him with his club to get home.

Turned out his left front tire had worn through his brake line.....

Tim Cooper.