Aloha!!!!
That's right. No questions to ask. No problems that need fixen. Why you
wonder? Did I just leave the project sitting in the driveway all weekend?
I should say not. We had a true, no holds barred, white knuckeled little
expedition this weekend...and me Rover survived :-).
3 88's and a 109 met early Saturday morning at Wheeler Army Airfield and
headed over to East Range. Another 88 had to back out with dizzy problems,
and 2 other series owners were not available.
East Range is one of the training areas that makes up Schofield Barracks,
the Army post on the center of Ohau. On the map there is an 'improved
trail' that runs the perimiter of the training area, about 10k in length.
Only thing is, the map is dated 1979, and for my lifetime the Division at
Schofield has been Light (the walk every where). Judging from the
maintainance of the trail, I would hazard to bet that it's been a number of
years since even a Hummer has done the trail.
On the weekends, East Range is open, sortof. Range Control does not allow
civilian vehicles in training areas, but we found out that we are not
'forbidden' to go to East Range. It's like some unknown, unpublished rule.
So just about every weekend sees a couple of Jeeps and Landcruisers hitting
the trails. It's not gated off, but it's in a semi hidden spot, so you only
ever see Military people out there.
We had a beaut of a day, temps were nice and low, around 75mph, and mostly
sunny. It has been pretty cool for the past week, and the winter rains are
hitting us a bit late. Flood watches last weekend, and some pretty heavy
rains every night since.
The trails are not your typical mainland tanktrail sort. It's hard pack red
clay and intermitant lava rock. In most spots the clay is very very hard
pack. With the recent rains the surface in some areas had a nice 1/8-1/4
inch thick layer of liquified clay, about the consistancy of what you find
in a babies diaper. On top of the hard pack it was like ice.
Sections of the trail were really rutted, combination of Hummers, other
wheelers, and decades of rain. In some spots the ruts were 2-3 feet deep,
no shit. The ruts that were casued by hummers casued the most problem. The
hummer track is so wide and the trails so thin, that you had no choice but
to ride one wheel in the rut, one on top. Watching Kevin go through one
section ahead of me, I was ready to turn around. I still don't see how he
didn't roll over. The side slope was like this "/". Ok, that is an
exageration, but only slightly. His passenger was waiste up out the window.
When it came my turn, I just sinched up the lap belt tight....for the center
seat, and let her go. If you have never driven your Rover from the center
seat, I highly recomend it. Only had the dog as my passenger, have a sled
type harness for him, and belt him in, but he freaked. AFTER I got through
the worse part I did snap a picture out the front windscreen as to measure
the angle between the trees and my Landy. What a rush. Oh, and if you
popped out of the rut towards the left better stop fast and put her in
reverse. It's a rain rut, that cuts even further left, and it was a long
way down.
At times we were on muddy track with a 20-30 foot cliff straight up on one
side and a 80-100foot straight down on the other. I stopped once to take a
picture, and had to hold on to the bed tub rails to prevent loosing my
footing and tumbling to my death. :-) In some spots the rain ruts cut
perpandicular across the track. Combines with the slickness it was kinda
tricky. James and I have mud terrains but still had some wheel spin. Kevin
and David both had all terrain treads. In one spot it was a tight right
hand up hill turn, with a diaganol washout.. On the downhill side of the
washout, the left hand side of the trail was a steep drop. Just past the
washout, the left hand side turned into a steep wall and the right dropped
off. James took a couplke of runs on the right side of the trail, the wall
of the washout was steeper, and made it on the third go. Kevin made it with
out a problem. I had my line a bit too far to the left and bounced off the
cliffwall, no damage cept some paint scraped off my roobars. Helped sell a
pair to one of the other drivers...hahaha. Dave's 109 just could not get a
line. No matter how he lined up he got cross axled. He kept backing up to
his left, trying to get more straight on at the rutt. I was holding my
breath each time, he got as close to the drop off as possible. In the end,
James climbed on his right front hood and kevin and I pushed. Made it no
problem. This was the only section that the 109 seemed to have problems
with. Dave wheeled a bunch in Oz and really knows how to drive his rig.
Think he is considering a locker now though...hahahaa.
Other sections of the trail were total wash out, knee high mud holes. Only
had one wet ignition all day, wd40, and away he went.
Got some great shots. In one knife edge section, we looked down in one
direction towards Pearl Harbor, and in the other back up the central valley
towards the north shore.
For those of you that have ever slogged through the hills of East Range, you
may know this area well, it's called "Top of the World". When ever some CO
thinks his troops have a bit to much energy, he humps them up to the "TotW".
I took over 100 pictures in all, going to take me a few days to go through
them all, and edit the ones I want to post to the web. Will let you all
know when they are up.
What a great day, yeah!!!
Later alls
Pete
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Apr 16 2001 - 03:25:22 EDT