We left the pavement at about 10 am with three vehicles, Kerry’s Land Cruiser, Scotts Toyota and my Nissan Frontier. At first the going was a bit slow as we played on some obstacles and looked at the landscape. Kerry made it up some steep rutted hills and Scott was able to follow, with a lot of spotting and a little tug at the end on one of them. About 45 minutes after starting, Scott picked up a guy that was walking down the trail with only a small bottle of water. He stayed with us all the way to Crown King and then out to I-17. At about 11:30, the carnage started with Kerry slicing a tire through the sidewall. He had driven into a wash to pull an abandoned car out to the road, and on his way out brushed past a boulder that cut his sideway. A quick tire change and we were on our way again. After this, we started making some good progress towards Crown King. The landscape was very diverse and gradually changed from Desert Brush to trees to pines as we got higher in elevation.
I think Kerry got more practice at recovery than he really wanted on this trail. We ran into a 2wd Ford Ranger that was blocking the trail at one point. So the Land Cruiser tugged him off the obstacle. After the trail was clear, my Nissan got hung up on the same obstacle and Kerry had to pull me over it. Not too much further along I got hung up again on another rock and Scott was able to pull me off of that one. The rear spring hangers on Nissan hang down a lot lower than the rest of the truck frame, and were consistently what caused my stopped progress. I will be remedying this asap with a lift and maybe some reengineering. After those two spots the going was pretty good for a while, and the view of the mountains was becoming more and more beautiful.
We made it until about 2:30 pm without any other mishaps, but the trail was not done with us yet. While coming up a hill, I made a terrible choice of line and manage to high center the Nissan again. This time between trying to power over it, and a little sliding sideways I ended up resting not on my frame but hooked by my cross member. Unable to go forward, Scott tried to pull me off backwards, and rolled off the bead on his front driver’s side tire. Well, here the recovery work really began. Scott and Kerry went to work jacking Scott’s truck up, putting a strap around the tire and thanks to a little CO2 tank that I had rigged up were able to get his tire reset without too much trouble. Meanwhile I was able to jack the rear of the Nissan up to put some rocks under it. Then we jacked the front of it up until it would clear the rock that the cross member was hooked on. On the second attempt I was able to back off of the obstacle and then easily drove around it the way I should have gone in the first place. By this time we had a line of rigs behind us a so we wasted no time in getting on our way.
After that, the trail got much rockier, but we were able to get by without any more incidents, besides a mysterious flat tire (I aired it up on the spot and it’s still holding air today???). If I remember correctly we rolled into Crown King sometime between 4 and 4:30 in the afternoon. Dusty and tired, we set about airing up and getting supplies for the way home. After looking around the town a little bid, getting some stacks, we loaded up and headed out. The trail out of Crown King was a graded dirt road that took about half an hour to get to the highway. From there we split up and I assume everyone got home ok.
Carnage Report: 1 Sliced Tire for Kerry, 1 gash in one of my tires (still holds air, but it will take spare tire duty for the rest of its usable life) some slight mangling of the undercarriage of the Nissan (nothing important) and my first body damage (see pictures). Scott or Kerry, did you have any other carnage?
Trip summary: I think we all had a good time, although the trail ended taking longer and being a little more difficult that I had expected. After gearing up the Nissan a little bit, I would like to do it again. I definitely learned a few things, first and foremost that I need to practice more with my truck. I am not used to the longer wheelbase as opposed to the short lifted Jeep that was much less likely to get high centered. However the gearing and power on the Nissan is much better, allowing me to idle over rocks and up and down hills much easier.
