August 5, 2007 Monthly Ride at the Zion Grove Location of Paragon Adventure Park
I have a few photos of the Level 1 run. About 17 rigs in Levels 1 and 2, so we all started off together. We ran a trail called Woodpecker, basically a level trail through the woods with short stretches of rocks that required some careful maneuvering. Here are a couple of the sections with either individual rocks or stumps.
The most interesting sections had lots of small rocks packed close together.
Woodpecker is very flat, with no off camber stuff. There are only a few short climbs and drops. Here is an example of the handful of very very short "climbs."
After couple of hours the group split. Some of the rigs originally intending to run Level 2 ended up joining the three rigs that signed up for Level 1.
Here are some of the larger rocks that we encountered.
Then we went over to the Indian Rock trail (so named because the Indians used to sacrifice virgins on the rocks, at least that's the tale) and looked at the black trail (what trail). There was also an interesting rock wall fairly vertical and about 3-4 feet tall. I tried to climb it with the RedTrooper but only managed to get the front over it.
Once the front topped the wall, I high centered on my rails, lost contact with both front wheels and had to back down.
With its shorter wheel base, this Wrangler was able to make it with the help of some careful rock stacking.
After the wall, we went to play in the mud holes. At the first mud hole, the first few rigs took the by-pass. But it really didn't look that bad to me.
So I decided to try it even with my street tires.
What I didn't see was the exit was a straight wall about 3 feet high. The Trooper bounced off of it, skidded to the left and hit a tree with the fender.
Crunch!
Something
to bang out this week! I backed up and took the easy way out of the hole
that I missed the first time with all of the spray. Apparently the exit
that I attempted is only used by the level 3+ rigs running at least 37s. After
my "run" the guides guided the rest of the group that tried the mud
hole to the easy exit.
At next mud hole, I decided to let a lifted Wrangler running 33" M/Ts lead.
He just buried it up to his doors.
I tried
to pull him back out using a couple of straps, but he just dug in deeper. The
guides didn't want to push mud into his tailpipe and brought one of their Jeeps
around and winched him out from the front.
While this was going on, the level 2 group showed up and warned us about the
next mud hole. The entire group had to be winched through it. So it
was easy trail riding after that.
Here we are back at the staging area after another good day at Paragon. (Aren't they all?)
