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The lift was installed. The new 33" Goodyear MT/R's were on. It was time to see what this Jeep
would do! Another trip to Hollister Hills was planned. In the end, there was about three Jeeps
that had showed up. Dave with his yellow TJ, Chris and his girlfriend with his black TJ (which I
did not get any pics of), and my co-pilot and I in my TJ. When we got in the park we hit a couple
trails than played around in the obstacle course a bit. It was then Chris had noticed he had a
crack in his lower control arm bracket and decided to head out early. Dave and I went on to find
some difficult trails. After driving around a while we found the famous washout trail I try to
hit everytime I'm there. The recent rain and snow made this trail much more challenging than in
the past. Dave had gone first, and we followed, stopping to take some nice flex shots. We caught
up to Dave to find him fallen into a rut, on his side, both drivers side tires spinning in the
air. With a trac-lock he was able to power his way out of it. He told me "Don't do what I did!",
so I decided to straddle the rut on the other side. Everything was going okay until my drivers
side front tire dropped into the rut and the passenger rear rose up, and kept going. I watched
the ground come up at me in slow motion as the Jeep flopped on it's side also. Dave had winched
me back up and to my suprise, there was no damage to the Jeep at all! It had landed on the rocker
guard which held up once again. We drove around some more on other badly rutted trails, finding
a Toyota which was also on his side. Dave headed out as my co-pilot and & decided to take one
last trip to the observation point, and then head out ourselves. We had found there was still
some unmelted snow, which made the trails even more muddy and difficult to navigate. On the way
out I had the crazy idea of hitting the mud pit for a couple passes. The first time was fine,
the second time I had found a large hole which swallowed the front end of the Jeep. A quick tug
got me back out, but not without causing some damage to the Jeep. It took over an hour for the
clutch to dry out and be able to engage, and now the throw-out bearing whines. I just remembered
why I prefer rocks over mud...
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