Orange County 4Play 4x4 Club - Run and Trip Report - Johnson Valley, January 1st through January 4th 2004

For those of you that decided to stay home and play in the rain you missed a mighty fine trip. Mark, Cal, Jeff, along with Sue and I met in Barstow at noon on Friday for lunch. from there we went to Beaver Utah getting there at about 10PM for the night. Saturday morning we drove on in to Moab getting there at noon. After setting up camp we ran the Moab Rim Trail. It was a fun trail and we got to watch a Samurai do a roll on it's side when we crossed the crack going up and it was going down. 5 of us rolled it back on it's wheels by hand and sent her on her way. On Sunday we ran the Golden Spike Trail. It rained a little over night but it was nice by the time we got to the trail. At the Golden Crack it started to hail and I have never seen it come down so hard but it only lasted 10 minutes and the sun came back out. Jeff showed us all how he could climb Double Whammy and he made it look to easy. On Monday we were with the ProComp people at the new Off-Road Park by Upper Helldorado. We didn't do much but it was fun watching the rock buggies play. Tuesday we went with ProComp to Lions Back which lasted till about noon and then we ran the Hells Revenge trail It is a lot of slick rock and good views of the area. On Wednesday we joined Ross and Clark to do the Kane Creek trail and Flat Iron Mesa. It was a fun day with great scenery. On Thursday it was raining when we got up to do Pritchet Canyon which is one of the toughest regular trails there. By the time we got to the trail it had stopped raining and it turned into a great day. Pritchert is one of the busiest trails there and we wanted an early start getting there at 6:30. We thought we were in the Twilight Zone as we so no other vehicle on that trail, Hunter Canyon Trail, or 1/3 of the way through Behind The Rocks Trail. We ran Behind The Rocks trail backwards driving up White Knuckle and running on up the trail. We were going to do a trail Friday and leave in the evening but when we got up the snow level was just a few hundred feet above Moab and we decided to pack it in a leave early. It was a great week and I am already looking forward to next year.