Organizing a July 5/6 Rausch Creek Run

Don't rule anything crazy/random out either, you never know what the guys at those oil change places will do. Guy I know worked at a place for a short while where a guy was replacing spark plugs, dropped a nut or something literally into the cylinder and rather than tell anyone because he was afraid of getting in trouble buttoned it back up and when they cranked it over, destroyed the engine.

Doubt your situation is anything like that but keep an open mind as to what unanticipated things it could be. Good luck and I hope its just the water pump!

I am doing my water pump Saturday. Waterpump party? lol

TJ, sorry things have changed suddenly for you, murphys law right? Hoping you can get the water pump in tonight, and that it takes care of your problem.

As always guys, have fun on this trip and be safe!

And take a lot of pictures!!!

My brother's girlfriend surprised us by driving up from North Carolina and she's got a 2012 WK2 that she's always wanted to test on the trails, so I think the 3 of us are heading down tomorrow. Minimum group size is 2 so that works fine.

The only two vehicles are from Texas and North Carolina, but I'm still counting it as a North Shore Jeeps run, ha ha. I'll take lots of pictures and scout well for future reference if people want to take a contingent down at a later date.

Glad it worked out for you Geoff. Definitely post the pictures, I'm genuinely interested in what I missed out on. My mechanic is taking the valve cover off the the YJ tomorrow to see if there's anything noticeably broken or out of place. He and I were listening to it run when I dropped it off, and he says the noise is definitely top-end (like I thought) so things could be worse. I'll stick with the theory that the noise started when it did to keep me from doing more harm. The Jeep's pretty good like that.

I'll do a bit more of a report later when I've pulled the pictures off, but it went very well.

Rausch Creek is a pretty amazing and definitely has the full gammut of challenges. I didn't get many pictures of the JK because I was mostly riding with and spotting the WK2 (my little brother was wheeling the JK for me).

The WK2 did....spectacular. It was her first time ever wheeling and she did some pretty intermediate stuff with off-camber, drop-offs, deep water, technical crawling, etc. Very very impressed with both the vehicle and her.

The JK was rock solid and did it all with no issue (although I did bang the skidplates pretty hard a couple times). Wheeling an automatic is weird, but certainly neat having the torque converter doing the work.

Like I said, I'll give a little more info later, but it was a very successful trip!

Great to hear. I can attest to the automatic being weird thing. I got the Cherokee driving last night and finally got a chance to make sure the t-case/4WD worked...holy bejesus. Mind you the brakes are bad, but just shifting the thing from 'Park' into 'Drive' on pavement you could feel the immediate torque. That puppy wants to move. After four years of driving the YJ everyday I find myself almost having to 're-learn' how to drive an automatic. Even driving my girlfriend's Corolla around was a bit of a challenge this past week while the YJ was down for the count, but that's because I haven't been that low to the ground in four years either (when not driving the Jeep I'm usually driving either my parents' Explorer or F-150, but the F-150 is out of commission and the old man has to get to work somehow). Pretty much everything about the Cherokee is different from the YJ so it'll be quite the learning experience.

Figured I should probably post pictures/report before I totally forget, ha ha.

The two vehicles we brought we our JKU and my brother's girlfriend's LTSO's (family term meaning "Long Term Significant Other") WK2.  The only two vehicles on a North Shore Jeeps run were from Texas and North Carolina, ha ha.

So while we took it pretty easy on the trails for the most part, you have to remember that we had to drive 9 hours and 36 hours back home, ha ha.

In terms of trails, we barely touched like....2% of the park.  There are lots of stock-friendly trails, but even the "Green" trails sometimes offered some pretty intermediate challenges at times.

From the parking lot, we took trails B and E over to the Powerline trail, down the Powerline trail, took trail 11 around the outside, then back to H, which led us back to E and B to the parking lot.

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In terms of difficulty, the Greens are pretty wildly variety and surprisingly B, the first trail off the parking lot actually gave us the most grief and damage out of the whole run.

The difficulty was mostly that it has just monsooned the previous couple days and there were *huge* "puddles" every 30ft or so.  The puddles were sometimes 1" deep of murky water and sometimes 3" deep of murky water and you couldn't tell the difference.  Worse, sometimes the bottom was thick slick mud and sometimes it was a rock garden with lots of transmission smashers...and you didn't know until you were driving through it.

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For the most part, either myself or my brother would drive through in the JK to figure out what the bottom terrain was and then use that information to spot her WK2 through.  We did get a few solid hits from rocks and did get stuck once or twice, but managed to rock her off or out.

Btw, I should probably mention that this is her brand-new-to-her 2012 WK2 that is her *baby*.  I was super impressed with her being happy and willing to push it like she was.

Oh, and it was a base model, so no 4 lo!  No fancy terrain dial, no two-speed transfer case.  Just AWD, some skid plates, and brake-lock differential system (more about that later)

.....oh, and no true recovery points.  That was really dumb on me not to realize that until halfway through, ha ha.

After the B trail, which was pretty stressful was the E trail, which was basically a fire road.  We originally started doing the 101 trail, but felt like we should do it from the other direction, so we joined the main road again and continued north.

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The Powerline trail seemed like the best way to get to the far trails, so we decided to go that route.  Holy...crap was that a challenging "green".

What made it so challenging was that it was a super steep downhill on shifty red sandstony type gravel with lots of ruts and off-camber sections.  The pictures are never going to do the steepness justice, but here are some anyhow.

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TIRES OFF THE GROUND!

This, btw, is where the Brake Locking Differential system became readily apparent and was just....amazing.  Basically, it's an upgraded automatic electronic version of the old-school trick of hitting the brakes when your tire starts spinning.

It locks up the wheel without traction, sending all power to the other wheel.  So there would be times where we would be going across a deep rut at an angle and only two wheels would be touching at a time.  The moment a wheel left the ground, it would lock up, power transfer to the other wheel, and it would move forward.  When it hit ground again it would apply power and the other wheel that just lost traction would lock up.

I wish I had gotten a video.  It was amazing to watch.  Just a ballet of tires and brakes that kept a perfectly smooth cruise while half-hanging in the air and gliding over the wash.  Just awesome.

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For this section, Nate drove the JK and I pretty much entirely spotted.  Again....automatic, no hill descent assist and NO 4 LO! So Val had to have employ some seriously impressive driving skills and throttle finesse to exactly position her wheels, throttle enough to roll over the rocky obstacles, then control the brakes to prevent slamming down while being off-camber and rolling as a result.  Very impressed with her skills as a driver and ability to take spotting directions.

DID I MENTION THIS WAS HER FIRST TIME *EVER* WHEELING!!!!!!?!

Even the JK had to be pretty careful with all the off-camber stuff, but Nate did an awesome job.  (I have no pictures of the JK during this section because I was spotting, photographing, and pooping my pants.)

Finally made it through the powerline trail and after a small rocky technical section, we got to go on the 11 trail, which was beautiful!

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Really should have taken more pictures on this section, but it was again, essentially a fire road that climbed up the mountain through increasingly picturesque scenery.  (I even startled a deer that I came up on!)

At the end of 11 came another slightly technical rocky section that I had fun barreling the JK through, then came back and spotted the WK2 as she went through it (with very little help needed, I might add).

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From 11 we joined with H, which was *way* better than the Powerline trail, with some moderately technical rockiness since it was entirely uphill.  We had to stop and take a break halfway because her transmission temperature kept climbing. (Remember, all uphill at slow speeds with no 4Lo)  We googled it and it was still lower than acceptable for towing, so we kept on.

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Finally we got back to E and tried to get back by way of Tower Road, which is pretty much a fire road, but got our path blocked by the 5-ft deep Mud Pit, which apparently has a go-around, but it was so muddy that I was afraid of the WK2 getting stuck with no recover points, so we went back to E and went by way of B again.

B seemed to suck even more on the way back and required spotting for virtual every puddle.  That short little section probably took us a good 45 minutes and got stuck twice.  Luckily, I managed to rock her out both times.  The second time, though, (when she was already getting tired and a little annoyed) we accidentally left the windows down while *gunning* it to get out of the mud puddle and we splattered the entire new pristine interior with thick rotten smelling mud.  She was kind of pissed...   

(I was laughing on the inside, though, as I recognized the trying-to-keep-myself-from-getting-pissed face from her accompanied by the holy-sh*t-how-do-I-make-this-better face from my brother that I've seen from Dianna and myself so often    )

You can see from the later parking lot picture the level of mud throwing.   

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Back at the parking lot, they had an air station to air back up and we headed home to join my family's traditional post-4th Fajita Fest!

Overall, great trip.  Only 5 hours or so on the trails, but definitely pretty challenging and tiring.  I think a trip camping there would definitely have to be split up into morning and afternoon runs with a good back-at-camp break for lunch.  Or, depending on group interest, a stock-friendly run in the morning and a challenging run in the afternoon.  People could do both or just one or wheel one and tag along on the other.

And just because the JK barely got any pictures because I was spotting the other vehicle (the JK pretty easily powered through everything), here is a picture taken the next day when I took the top and uppers off for a cruise around the Lake! (Note that the JK somehow got *no* mud on it.  Still not sure how that happened)

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Awesome pics...the ones of the WK look like they belong in a Jeep commercial

Great pictures, looks like it was a blast. I'm still pissed the YJ decided clack away on me right before the trip. But of all the things you just wrote about, I have to harp on this: a friggin Jeep 'base model' vehicle doesn't come with 4-Lo? That's a goddamn travesty on their part. Next thing you know they'll take a 2014 Subaru Forester and slap a Jeep emblem on it and start selling it as a Cherokee.

Oh...wait.