Mark Colby, Steve Bass, my Granddaughter Kayla, and I left Thursday morning to drive to Hard Core Heaven. We got there and set up camp about 2:30 in the afternoon. While Steve was still setting up his camp Mark and I drove over to try to find the new trail Big Johnson. Our directions were a little vague and the new trail we thought was it just went up a ways and dead-ended so we went back to camp since it was getting late.

The next morning Jeff Reynolds arrived and we were good to go. Steve Bass was having a bad time with camping gear so he decided to not push his luck and opted to just go home before doing any trails. Since Jeff had run Big Johnson before we wanted him to lead us over there so we could see it.

Of course once we were there we just had to go up it. We were through fairly early so we went ahead and did the Hells Gate Trail.

That done we did the Sun Bonnet Trail. Sun Bonnet has toughened up a lot since I was on it last and was a fun challenge. I broke a tie rod in half and had to weld it back together taking a spare ¾" grade 8 bolt and welding it to the tie rod to help reinforce it. We got off the last trail just as the sun was setting and worked our way back to camp.

Saturday we did the Outer Limits trail, which is one of the longer ones out there. It had really gotten a lot harder than Mark or I remembered and was a good challenge. At one point Jeff ripped the left front spring hanger off the frame and bent the tie rod. With some judicious jacking and prying we got it back into place and I welded it on. Then we ran the winch cable under the Jeep to the back to a pulley and back forward to the tie rod to bend it back into place. That done we were good to go and no further problems.

It was mid afternoon when we got back to camp and Jeff packed up and went home. Mark, Kayla, and I sat around the campfire and told old stories of past runs and reran this one. Sunday morning we packed up, went into town for breakfast and came home. The weather this weekend was the best we had ever had for a New Years run out there. Mid seventies during the day with cool evenings and NOOOO WIND.

Frank Hayes KE6RDG
President Orange County 4-Play
Hayes Ent. custom Jeep work
http://hayesentjeep.com