The Big Bear Trifecta

Story and Pictures by Steve Unwin

Attendees:
Charlie Seeger - yellow TJ
Matt Unwin/Thad & Rachel Gilmore - white TJ Rubicon
Steve Unwin/Nora - white TJ

Yesterday Charlie, my dad and I went up to Big Bear to do 3 of the harder trails up there. The trails are done back to back starting with Dishpan Springs, Holcomb Creek and the John Bull Trail.

We started on Dishpan Springs, the newly opened trail with a black diamond rating. The scenery is amazing as you make your way from Lake Arrowhead towards Big Bear Lake. At the earliest part of the trail after Deep Creek there is a minor rock garden that requires some careful tire placement to do without getting hung up. None of us had any difficulty there. At the hard part of the trail there is a very rocky uphill climb with a "waterfall" type obstacle at the top. There is a bypass, which still looks pretty bad. All of us opted for the harder line up the waterfall. I made it with no trouble. My dad and charlie both did wheelies, then tried again and made it. We finished the trail in less than two hours and moved on to Holcomb Creek.

Holcomb Creek starts out with a nice rock garden. All of us commented on how it use to be much harder. This time there was no need for spotting, especially for those of us with larger tires. We had no real difficulties on this trail until we got to the second rock garden. My dad's Rubicon struggled due to lack of ground clearance. Fortunately he had ample armor and we could hear the screeching metal as he clawed his way along. At one point he got high centered and it required rock stacking and the use of his winch to get him unstuck. A misjudgement in spotting on my part got him his first body damage: a dent in the rear passenger corner. Later, wrote on the dent with a Sharpe pen "Jesus forgives, Rocks don't: Holcomb Creek 7/27/06". I'm glad he had a sense of humor about it. We all negotiated our way to the end of the trail with little difficulty and noticed how few vehicles we were seeing on that day. It was unexpected. At the end of Holcomb Creek we splashed around in the water crossing and got some pretty good pictures of it.

The group made its way to the East side of the John Bull trail with plenty of time left in the day and a confident attitude. Charlie and I did fine with our larger tires and ground clearance but here again ground clearance was the issue for the Rubicon. The winch was required to unstuck my dad from a ledge climb. Later as we descended down the west hill my dad's Rubi slipped off a rock into a position which threated to take out his driveshaft. After a lot of trial and error (including my dad smashing his finger stacking rocks) we were able to winch him backwards and no damage was done. Beyond this we were careful to spot him the rest of the way down so as not to have a repeat performance. Dad was getting tired after his 3rd black diamond trail of the day, and so were we!

So it was a fun day in the forest for us with lots of fun and lots of work. We topped it off with a dinner at the local Mex restaurant and headed home.

Trashhaven

Just got back from the run this morning in the area referred to as Trashhaven. Went back to the area where we were last week with the new guy and completed the trail. It was kind of hairy and I'm glad we didn't do it at night the way we were planning.

Anyhow, My dad and I did pretty much all the black diamond stuff there is to do up there and now I pretty much know every trail on the mountain. There's plenty of stuff to do, all skill levels. Its a good place to practice your recovery skills.

The temperature was 113 degrees at noon and I had the top down. On my way back down the hill my rear disk brakes started grinding and letting me know its time for new pads. Then I remembered those are the pads that came with the axle when I found it sitting in the junkyard. God knows how many miles are on those pads, but they're grinding bigtime. Luckily I got it home without having flames jetting out of my wheels. I'll replace them when it cools down a bit!

Peterson's Article

I finally got a copy of the Peterson's magazine today. I went and scanned it all and posted it up on my website. You can download the full sized image 1.5mb here
FULL IMAGE

It looks like this only much bigger times bigger.

New guy gets broken in on first meeting

After July's monthly meeting a group of veteran club members (Steve, Mike and Chuck) went tooling in the local hills with a newcomer (Christian) in tow. He showed himself to be an able wheeler, despite having 33's and open diffs. We think he's going to fit in just fine. We were laughing because on day one he's nearly fulfilled his requirements for membership.

Since none of us were prepared to go wheeling, all of us were wearing flip flops, had no recovery gear, no tools, and no way of airing back up. This was probably the least prepared I have ever been. Next meeting I go to I'll be packing all the right gear, just in case.

This run was another example of the futility of CB and the superiority of VHF radio. CB was constantly scratchy and short on range. Meanwhile Charlie and I were able to jaw on simplex the whole time and for most of the way home. we were 8 miles away and I could still talk on simplex with him. When he finally got out of range we hooked up with the palomar 146.075 repeater and continued the conversation all the way home. This is communication at its best.

Devil's Canyon

So I put up a link on the front page of the website to Steve's Devil's Canyon page - excellent write up Steve. I especially like the Historical Society pictures of the same trail with old Model - T's on it.