Sierra Trek 03

[LOPPY]

Immagine my suprise to see not one thread here about ST03? I'm not a big fan of huge runs like this, but this one sounds pretty fun. I'm going with my dad's club. We'll be on the SWB run Friday and working winch hill 5 that day and Saturday. I'll be staying with the club too, find the Wine Country Rock Crawlers. Come say Hi. See ya on winch hill 5.

[Dirty Harry]

Cool! The Wine Country Rock Crawlers definitely contributed a lot of volunteer time to Trek this year and it is appreciated. I'm heading up Thursday night and working Winch Hill #2 on Friday and Saturday with the Fremont F-Troop, I'll keep an eye out for you.

[RCKRATZ]

We are headed up on Friday morning. Sat SWB Rolling Trail Committee. Keep an eye out for the Fuzzy Dice, they aren't hard to spot

[LOPPY]

Awesome guys. Let's hook up for sure. I'll be up with my bro in law Drock tonight, prolly late afternoon. Look for the Silver CTD Dually 4x4 towing a big ugly black beat to shite YJ. That's me!
I should be in my black RPS T shirt and will have a straw hat on. Come by the Winecountry camp (my dad said they are right on the water by the lake) and we'll see ya up there. I'll have a "Loppy" name tag on too. Hope to run into ya'all.

I'm really not a big "mass run" guy, but I'm really looking forward to this!!

[TDW]

Those Wine Country guys are some shady people.

Actually I had the pleasure of meeting a few of them and they helped us out in a big way in July down there. Great group of folks I met.

Have fun at ST03.

[LOPPY]

I had a freak'n BLAST! Cool to see so many of you on hill 5. I ended up towing two rigs up hill 5. It was awesome. Cant wait for next year!

[Rock-Wear]

Id have to say that after running the trail last tuesday/wednesday for the first time, I thought the trail was amazing. I then ran sierra trek on friday and found it to be much easier. But I wasnt complaining, I still had a good time even though every winch hill had rocks pre-stacked. Its when I hiked down to winch hill 4 on saturday that really pissed me off. I watched rocks being winched OFF the trail because they were to "difficult" to drive over. When I confrunted the rock stackers/movers they told me that these participants PAID to drive to the top and they would do anything neccisary to get them there. If you ask me, these practices give people a false sense of their abilitys on the trails we run, and are the cause of alot of unprepared people and vehicles on the trail. Not only that but it ruins the trail for everyone who come through when the event is over

[nobody20]

How about some pics from the 03 TREK?

[Dirty Harry]

Matt I agree with you to some extent but you must realize that the volunteers at the winch hills are trying to get 100+ rigs over the trail each day and often by the time drag gets to Winch Hill 4 it is nearly dark and they have been on the trail for 12+ hours.

I've worked at Winch Hill 2 for several years now and we usually try to make an easier line and harder line to give people options. We have as many people complaining about having to wait in line at the bottom of the hill because the people in front of them could not make it up as we have people complaining that we "pave" the trail. You just cannot please everyone.

Thanks for coming on the run though, I am glad you had a good time. If you want to get more involved next year Cal4Wheel is always looking for more volunteers to make Sierra Trek even better.

[Dirty Harry]

Here is a pic from Winch Hill #1.

[Dirty Harry]

Cool pic of my friend Dale. This was his first time on Fordyce and he was loving it.

[Scott Jensen]

harry, that bronco, does it still have a d44 or something else? Kinna looks like a 60? hard to tell by the lighting though

[Dirty Harry]

It has the stock 44 and 9", but it has a "glider" skid plate on it that makes it look kind of funky. It has 35s and is locked front and rear, but otherwise it is pretty stock.

The guy's name is Rick Bright and he lives in San Ramon. The rig did great all weekend.

[GRIDWNC]

Originally posted by Childsplay
Id have to say that after running the trail last tuesday/wednesday for the first time, I thought the trail was amazing. I then ran sierra trek on friday and found it to be much easier. But I wasnt complaining, I still had a good time even though every winch hill had rocks pre-stacked. Its when I hiked down to winch hill 4 on saturday that really pissed me off. I watched rocks being winched OFF the trail because they were to "difficult" to drive over. When I confrunted the rock stackers/movers they told me that these participants PAID to drive to the top and they would do anything neccisary to get them there. If you ask me, these practices give people a false sense of their abilitys on the trails we run, and are the cause of alot of unprepared people and vehicles on the trail. Not only that but it ruins the trail for everyone who come through when the event is over

Matt, Please make sure you get the facts straight. The only rock that I am aware of being winched was NOT winched off the trail it was winched into place ON the trail.

Tell me this, your "confronting" of the crew working the hill was it polite or are you the jerk that mouthed off about it being your trail and you "walked" up it the day before with no problems?

I WAS there. I WAS stacking and winching rocks INTO place AFTER the 8 NON-PAID participants came through and destroyed that hill by blowing all the rocks out of place. Had they taken an accurate line for that section, this wouldn't have occurred. But because they wanted to use their own spotter, who was standing within one foot of the drivers side door the whole time the vehicle was in motion, they simply could have maneuver through the obstacle with any level of finesse.

[RCKRATZ]

We had an encounter with the absolute worst link suspension ever built and were stuck fixing it for one of the participants for 4 hours....ever seen a hi-lift suspension By the time we got to Winch Hill 4 it was getting dark and the drag committee for unknown reasons stopped at the shortcut. One of the guys in our group was helping out the drag committee with the 4 link guy because he had sheared the wheel studs off for the 2nd time of the day and he had a welder, so he stopped to weld them back on for the guy, and ended up having to wheel all the way into Meadow Lake by himself in the dark because the drag committee did not continue into Meadow, and they never used the CB to tell anyone that they were leaving our buddy on his own

Ran into a few people from the board Dan H, Dirty Harry, Fullsize, etc.. nice to meet you all. All in all we had a great time but were pretty frustrated by the end of the day.

[GRIDWNC]

Originally posted by RCKRATZ
We had an encounter with the absolute worst link suspension ever built and were stuck fixing it for one of the participants for 4 hours....ever seen a hi-lift suspension By the time we got to Winch Hill 4 it was getting dark and the drag committee for unknown reasons stopped at the shortcut. One of the guys in our group was helping out the drag committee with the 4 link guy because he had sheared the wheel studs off for the 2nd time of the day and he had a welder, so he stopped to weld them back on for the guy, and ended up having to wheel all the way into Meadow Lake by himself in the dark because the drag committee did not continue into Meadow, and they never used the CB to tell anyone that they were leaving our buddy on his own

Ran into a few people from the board Dan H, Dirty Harry, Fullsize, etc.. nice to meet you all. All in all we had a great time but were pretty frustrated by the end of the day.

What day did this happen? Saturday? I was in front of drag all day Friday, so I know it wasn't then. Sorry that happened and DEFINATELY should not have. Drag is suppose to follow the last participant up the trail or drag them to a safe place to facilitate parts recovery/repair and relay to base camp that condition. I recommend you speak with the chairperson or email him about this happening to make sure it doesn't occur again. We want to insure that everyone has as good a time as possible dispite trail carnage.

[RCKRATZ]

yeah it was on saturday. Only thing that bothered me was that our buddy got left behind. (we were the rolling trail committee)

[GRIDWNC]

Well the standard is to get the rig off the trail to a safe place to make the repairs or strap them out via the bypass or up the rest of the trail IF it can be done safely. The trail/drag crews are suppose to notify base camp of what has occurred and what decisions have been made as far as repair/towing/leaving the rig until parts arrive. I'm sorry that your buddy was left behind. Do you know if the drag crew did the above notification to Meadow Base Camp? Is it perhaps just a miscommunication that they weren't aware that you or someone else needed to be notified of your Buddy's status. I've been there and there is SOOO much to remember to do as far as notifying and insuring that everything is safe/secure. It's pretty easy to forget to call people that aren't on your "to do" list at the beginning of the trail. Not making excuses, just trying to figure out how it happened.

Kimber

[RCKRATZ]

I think we are getting confused here. The guy that broke was taken care of. They got him to the shortcut and got him out. Our buddy was helping with the repairs. After we fixed the suspension he was stuck in the middle of the drag crew and we got on the cb to make sure he was coming and they said yes, but the same rig that we just repaired broke again and he stayed to help repair it again. The drag crew then decided that they were not going to run the rest of the trail, so our buddy was on his own getting to Meadow.

[1988YJ]

I worked winch hill 5 with Loppy and honeycomb.... I was there all three days, we didn't leave until released by meadow base. Thursday night it was after 10:30pm. It's too bad your buddy got left behind. Last I heard on Saturday night was a group of scouts, 3 i think and four vehicles behind them. Winch hill five wasn't paved with rocks, we had easy lines and hard lines or just turn on your lights and pick your own line. You even had a chance to earn Mardi-Gras beads on winch hill 5...

[RCKRATZ]

We were right behind the scouts, caught them when one of them broke on 4. I still have some of those beads hanging from my bumper.....we were the last one's through before Larry

[66CJdean]

We had a good time working WH#3. We did a fair amount of paving but not enough to make it too easy. I remember that green Bronco. We did are best to get him through without any damage but I think he left some paint anyway. Nice guys for sure. We had one guy that didn't give a crap about what we said and he gave it hell. The problem was it gave it right back in the order of 3 drivelines, one rear axle removed and a bent tierod. It took 3 winches to get his rig out. We probably won't be asked to work the hill again but we will if needed. Hope there aren't to many pissed at the way we ran the hill but it seemed as though most people were haveing a very good time and that was nice to see. Hope to see Treks #'s start going up not down.

[Dirty Harry]

Thanks for helping out Dean! I did not know that you were up there. I talked to a couple of the guys, I might have even talked to you. I got up there right after the guy that broke everything but before the TJ that all of the spotters fell on.

I stuck around for quite a while, Winch Hill #3 was the best photo op on the trail this year by far. Saw Mark Werkmeister take his yellow buggy through the squeeze, the 6BT CJ-7 twist his rear driveline, Jimbo drive up on Tony's tire on his way through the squeeze and Steve Sasaki from Powertank take a crazy high line in his ultra clean 4Runner.

I am jealous, you got to see all of the action at Winch Hill #3 and I only got to watch a small part. Oh well, we have a better camping spot than you down at Winch Hill #2.

[66CJdean]

If we are back for next year I plan to stay down at the river. It doesn't take any time to get up to #3 and the only people we are "supposed" to help don't get there till 12 noon or so. I missed a good part of Saturday because I had to head out to Cisco to get my gal so I left at 2pm or so and didn't get back till 8 or so.
Man those Star Trek guys sure know how to unstack a hill. I the morning after the night run all the rocks were way down the hill!

[rckwrangler]

We had just finished doing the Hi Lift suspension and said we were going to joinup with the rest of Four Dice when I saw a lug nut fall off that black POS rig infront of us. We couldn't just leave him so we stuck 4 bolts through the back of his axle flange and welded them into place. Put it all back together and hit it with the impact wrench to secure it. When we were putting the tools away the rest of the trail/drag commitee told us at 7:30 they were taking the bypass and camping at Cisco. We hit the rocks hard back to meadow lake it was already getting dark, came across a group finishing a tire repair at about 9 and joined up with them the rest of the way. Got back to camp at 9:30.