Tuttle Creek ORV Park
8 Feb 2003
Justin Kalemkiarian came home from college for a week, so Stacy and I (YJ) made a 2-Jeep run to Kansas with him and his parents, Brent and Lynn (ZJ). It had snowed earlier that week, and although it had mostly melted off, there were still some spots here & there with very slippery mud that caused problems throughout the day.
On the three ledges at the northwest corner of the park.
Brent climbing the whoops. "Good" (pictured) was too greasy to
provide traction, so Brent had to follow Ben up "Bad," which provided
much better traction this day.
Descending the big ledges on the west side of the park.
Winding through Scrambler Creek.
Descending a hill from the southwest corner of the park.
We climbed Corkscrew with no trouble & at lunch at the top of Driveshaft.
We came upon a flock of wild turkeys who had the same idea, but they
ran off before we could substitute any of them for the sandwiches Brent
forgot at home.
After spending some time watching another group of newbie Omaha wheelers
trying to climb Driveshaft, Justin decided that he should give it a shot,
too. The rocks near the top were very greasy, and the only vehicle we
saw make it over was a TJ with dual lockers -- and it took him quite a
few tries.
3.8MB AVI video
3.8MB AVI video (best one)
After Justin gave up on Driveshaft, the womenfolk took the wheels and
we headed north along the lake shore. At one point, we climbed a
steep little hill above the boat dock.
On the way back, Justin found a good spot to test our suspension flex.
The slippery traction prevented us from climbing as high up the bank
as we otherwise might have.
Climbing Witch's Hill.
We had the good sense not to try to climb Arp Hill, but Ben decided
to try out Woody's Lane instead. Justin waited at the bottom while
Stacy & Ben checked out the ledges. We decided that they should be
able to make it up the easiest set of ledges, and called for them
to join us. Apparently we overestimated Justin's ground clearance,
because he got hung up on his rear control arms, and his greasy tires
kept spitting out all the rocks we stacked.
We decided to back Justin down off the ledges and head over to the
ledges at the top of Arp Hill, which looked a bit easier. Unfortunately,
the mud was greasy enough that as Justin tried to back off the ledge on
Woody's lane, he started sliding sideways. The first photo indicates the
off-camber angle he was at. Brent & Ben both feared that if his left
tires slid off that big rock, the ZJ would roll. Ben decided to hook
up a safety line and play tug of war with the ZJ while Brent guided
Justin back down onto the main trail. He made it without a scratch,
although I imagine Brent's heart rate took a while to drop back to normal.
We still had to stack a few rocks to get Justin up the far left ledge
on Arp Hill, but he eventually made it and we headed back home.
last updated 4 Mar 2003 Obi-Wan (obiwan@jedi.com)
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