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Dry River and Dictum
Ridge Several of the FJBruisers (4 FJC's, an Isuzu Trooper and a 4Runner) made a Winter run to the section of GWNF West of Harrisonburg, VA. We started in the Dry River section.
Next, we played in some mudholes. However, there was no real mud, it was all frozen.
Then, we decided to try Dictum Ridge from the bottom. However the passage was blocked by several berms. When Rip was high centered his lifted FJ on the second berm, we knew that we could not get the stockers up that way. So we took the long way around via RT612 to Long Run. The trail forks inside of the Park, one way going to 2nd Mountain and the other to Dictum Ridge. Dictum Ridge was icy and rocky, but the rocks were small enough that the trail didn't seem too bad.
Eventually, however, we were stopped by some real rocks.
When Rip started to map out a possible route past the rocks, I began to get nervous. But when he came to the part of his "plan" that involved bouncing our rigs off of trees, that was too much for the old RedTrooper. As you can see, rigs that previously used the "bounce off the tree" method left their mark behind.
I started looking for an alternative and eventually found a bypass that didn't look too bad. Half the group was willing to give the bypass a try but the other half really wanted nothing to do with this madness. Who could blame them, given the newness of their rigs and the number of payments that they had remaining? Rip, who put the trip together, finally decided that it was best to keep the group together by backtracking to RT612. This was definitely the correct decision. Not only did we ALL come out undamaged, but it was a "fun" drive given the icy conditions. In fact, one tricky spot nearly "ate" two of the trucks before we finally made it back to pavement.
Link
to the directions to the
trails at GWNF (Dictum Ridge and Dry River).
Epilogue: One month later, the RedTrooper returned to Dictum Ridge and successfully went down the by-pass. |
