10 apr near Mongollan Rim in Coconino National Forest. Overlanding Shenanigans
in the screenshot above I show our camp (the tent) and the broken thing is where we couldn't get any further.
the morning was a bust looking for a place to top off the water in Jeff’s van, so he has to be a stinky boy. Campgrounds open mid april, probably next week.
we drove south from Heber. got on some backroads. saw a super swanky ranch that’s off grid w solar. like Dutton’s Yellowstone, but for alpaca’s
got into some hijinks trying to get to the Mongollan Rim to camp. we were blocked by a stretch of snow and 2 felled trees. a local, Kevin, with a tan 9mm glock strapped to his waist showed up in his toyota w his wife, Michelle.
he had a chainsaw, and cut the first tree fine, we cleared the cut bit by hand no problem. I used my dmos winter shovel to lower the center hump a jeep must have left going over before the trees fell.
the 2nd tree was a bigger problem. Kevin got his saw stuck. and it was too far away to winch. So I dug out my Safe-T bottle jack to jack up the tree, and he got his saw out. he got close to binding it again because he wasn’t doing a relief v cut. probably because his saw was running rough and hard to get going so he was minimizing the cuts. but he gave in and did the relief cut.
then the problem was the main tree settled on the bottle jack. it was no bueno getting it out by hand or digging. so that’s where the fun began for me.
i drove the truck up past the first tree, and that was fun. the truck wants to go driver side off the side of the road into the ditch. so back and forth, back and forth and got the proper line cleared.
got close enough to use the winch and pulled the beast of a tree just enough to get the bottle jack out. my winch pulls 9500lbs, and it was maxxed out and started to pull my truck towards the tree. anyway after a few release and pulls, or yanks it moved off the jack enough to get it out.
I had a nice base plate for the jack that’s a bit bent now. I’ll hammer it flat when I get home or order a new one. they’re like $50
while i was there, jeff wanted to clear the road by moving the smaller cut part of the tree, even though there was no way in heck his van was getting through the snow. it was personal now i guess.
so jeff got his pulley out and tree strap, and walked down the ditch a little so we’d have a pull point off to the side of the road. Made it easier to swing the cut tree off the road. I had my tree strap on the felled tree near the fresh cut.
winched and it went off the road easy. no yanking.
i was able to back down out of the snow no problem and turn around, but then an old lady showed up in her side by side with her two dogs.
she saw we cleared the trees, so she wanted to go, I told her the snow was deep, but maybe she’d float more than my truck. She did not.
got herself good and stuck. She hammered the gas until she was good and buried.
so I turned the truck back around and pulled her out. Fun times!
after that found camp nearby, had a nice Geyser sponge shower and now hanging out w Jeff by his cookie tin candle fire thing.
a good day. did get some photos and video of the hijinks. can’t wait to show my builder the dumb sh!t Jeff and I did. He’d approve.
