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 As everyone in the area knows, (or should know by now) Los Coyotes is closing on Memorial Day weekend. So we decided to enjoy it as much as possible before then. Warren Sternin, and I drove out Friday night with the intention of camping out and getting an early start Saturday morning. Though I'm not sure if a very comfortable camper with central heating, tv/vcr, and slide out living room is exactly camping...... WARREN!!

Actually my tent was quite warm, though if I hadn't bought an king size air mattress 2 days before, I think Warren would have had a room mate. Anyway we got to the campsite about 8:30pm and were amazed by the sight of about 4-6 inches of snow, we did not expect that! I drove in and scouted out the campsite before Warren drove his huge truck/camper/trailer/Toyota combo in. It seemed ok so we set up camp. After watching "Independence Day" and getting some beers down, it was bedtime. 

Saturday morning I awoke to the sound of Randy showing up in his Cherokee. There were supposed to be 2 or 3 other club members coming but they blew out. So it ended up just the three of us.

We followed out several members of the "Gadzooks" Suzuki Samurai club who left earlier, and caught up with them at "Left Turn Hill". They seemed to be making hard work of climbing up and over the deep snow and sliding around the sharp turn at the top. Not due to lack of capability, simply tough going in the snow. We decided to head on. When we got to "Dangerous Road" there were no tire tracks yet, and it was about 9:30am. The snow was about 1' - 11/2' deep here. We decided to come back after seeing if we could up get to "Lookout Mountain", and kept going. 

All of us had trouble sliding in the snow. It wasn't especially deep, maybe 6"-11/2' on the fire trail, but it was hard packed under the surface, so we would slide around on that. Pulling away after stopping would cause the most challenging. About a mile before Lookout Mountain we came across a fairly steep hill, not big, but slippery and a right hand turn. Warren went first, and took 3 or 4 attempts to finally clear it. However not before almost swapping paint several times with the front end of Randy's Cherokee. See, Randy had pulled up behind Warren so he could get up the hill. However he kept sliding back down, almost into Randy! 

 Anyway Warren made it up, and Randy seemed to get up no problem. I chugged up without any slippage ( I like that new Detroit!!) Warren was parked off to the side of the trail and Randy was further up. Warren made signals like he wanted me to stop, so I did. that's when I realized Warren's Toyota was actually in the ditch up to its floorpan! I had the only winch, so I had to go up the hill and pull him out. So I started up and went to pull away. Oops, probably shouldn't have stopped on the icy trail......  

I had all 4 wheels turning, thanks to the Detroit and the Tru-Trac, but I was still sliding slowly backwards. So I stopped and we put chains on my Jeep. After that it was easy to drive up the rest of the way, turn around and put a strap from my rear hitch hook, and around the nearest tree (with a tree saver!!). However after Warren pulled out all the winch cable, I realized he really had pulled out ALL the winch cable! All the way down to the screw holding the cable on. 125' of cable wasn't enough, so I pulled in 4-5 turns, and used Randy's strap too. The winch made short work of pulling Warren out, and instead of pulling him all the way up the hill,  I just pulled him onto his chains, which he quickly installed, and we were off again.

How Randy made it through without chains, I don't know. Both Warren and I were locked both ends and struggling. He still is open in front with an ARB in the rear. So hats off to him for getting as far as he did.

While we were getting un-stuck, some other people had elected to walk up to the Lookout instead of driving up. To be fair, it was a good decision on their part, they had 2 new 4-runners and a Full Size Blazer, none of them had a winch, chains, towrope, or even a shovel. We caught up with 2 of them on the way, and gave them rides as by now the snow was coming down with a vengeance. Also another guy in a very well setup Cherokee came up after us.

Finally we made it up to Lookout Mountain. Its called Lookout Mountain as there is an old forest service tower up here that used to be used for spotting forest fires. Apparently the views from up here are incredible. I say apparently as we couldn't see more than 100' or so due to the fog. 

The tower was closed at the platform due to the fact is it getting quite old and unstable, and the steps were covered in ice and snow. We let the kids slide down the hill from the tower while we adjusted chains, checked our rigs over and decided where to go from here. The other Cherokee driver told us he had been with the Suzuki's until they tried Dangerous Road. They had gotten themselves into a bit of trouble there as the trail was so slippery two of them had slid into each other very hard, destroying at least one heavy duty bumper in the process! That's when he decided to come up to the tower instead. We decided to go down and check it out.

When we got back to Dangerous Road, the Suzuki's had gone, probably continuing on. But there were several trucks parked nearby, including the one belonging to our passengers. We dropped them off, and Warren and I checked out the "drop off" route. Amazingly, the Suzuki's had gotten into trouble just taking the bypass! Again not due to ability, simply because the conditions were "extreme". The drop off wasn't deep in snow, but no-one had opted to take it, and we agreed with that decision. Randy's kids had a great time sliding down the bypass as the previous rigs had left deep ruts in the snow making it like a bobsleigh run. After about an hour of this, they were all cold and wet, and wanting to go home. So we went back to the campsite. 

By this time, it was about 2:30pm, early by run standards. However after talking it over, Warren and I decided there wasn't much else to do. The fire trails had provided enough of a challenge, and trying places like "Bobsleigh Run" and "Ball Bearing Hill" would have been tempting all kinds of disaster, even if we could have gotten there. Also Randy was leaving, and the Suzuki's returned to the campsite, packed up and left, which meant no-one else was out on the trails. Just the two of us, one winch, dangerous conditions, heavy storms forecast, and no chance of outside help pushed us into making the decision to quit while we were ahead. We'd had a good day, nothing was broken, and we'd made it back safely. So we packed up instead of staying for another run tomorrow.

Getting back down to the street proved to be exciting enough for Warren, as the temperature had gone up enough to make the dirt road out into a mud pit in several places. At one point the trailer was dragging him sideways into the embankment on an off-camber turn (still glad you went with the 4-wheel drive option, Warren?!). We knew made the right choice as it rained non-stop and hard all the way home. And continued to rain for three days afterwards. It would have been unpleasant to stay up there.

Tim Cooper.