2nd official TW Mammoth Lakes Off Road Social Distancing Trip Sep 4th - 7th

We made it back home around 5am this morning, thanks for putting this together!

 

Good thing, it got baaaad overnight, the sun is just barely visible thru the smoke. We all decided to leave after breakfast today. Eyes & sinuses were acting up for most, if not all. Trails are still open but what's the point if you can't see a damn thing? Been about 90 minutes since a small group of us left Lake Crowley & we're all slowly making our respective ways away from the smoke, but maybe headed towards the new fires sucks to cut the trip short by 24 hours but it just wasn't worth it anymore.

Smoke pics:

 

Was this someone from this thread? Got smoked out of the backcountry and came back to see that today

video i think- https://imgur.com/a/URc0oTE couldn't figure out how to embed that

 

Yep that embedded fine. No he wasn't with us but from where that camera is I know it was the people parked next to our group waiting to get past. The guy parked facing uphill on loose shale, he didn't stand a chance getting started. I made it up without any drama being 2wd, just gotta be mindful of where you come to a stop!

 

LMAO. I love it.

Your sig says Bishop. Never seen you post before. What part of the backcountry did you get smoked out of?

 

Thanks Brian for putting this together. I had a great time and plenty of laughs. My high mileage 2wd taco made up and back out just fine, no issues and no tugs.

IMHO, you need a locker at minimum to tackle this trail. Open differential ain't going to cut it. For the record I have a Eaton Detroit Truetrac. It worked awesome, shifted into L gear and skinny pedal worked like a charm.

On my way home and stopped at Indian Wells Brewery to refill my growlers. The smoke is thick in Ridgecrest.

 

Yep, pretty new to the TacomaWorld side of things. Guessing you must be one of the dozens of Tacomas around town lol

Was attempting to backpack from Tuolomne to June Lake but once ash started falling like snow, we said screw this and bailed.
Got some videos on my instagram story now so you can see how bad it was there. shows better in video than pics.

Edit- probably should link that
https://www.instagram.com/ben_banet/

 

The trail will be there when this is over. Pushing on could have been really bad. I wouldn't be surprised if this thing runs all the way up into the Meadows. Fish Camp is already under evac warnings.

Good guess but nope. My wheeling rig is a 97 4Runner with a few bells and whistles. lol

 

I just made it home. No drama. Now how do I post pictures in here?

 

Exactly.. had two friends keep pushing on to June and I was just thinking to myself they're idiots. I'm not breathing all that ash and soot for a trail I can come back for and actually see the views. Told them to finish today cause it won't get any better and they're still hiking.

The satellite imagery on this fire is nuts. Don't see it getting under control anytime soon..

https://weather.cod.edu/satrad/?par...lor-96-1-100-1&checked=map&colorbar=undefined

Did you used to have a tacoma? or how'd you rack up 2000+ messages here lol

 

hit the "upload a file" button on the bottom right of the new post box

 

Yeah, the rate of spread is huge. Cal Fire is reporting 45K acres but it's way, way, over that. It's gonna burn for a month at least.

A few years ago I was planning a wheeling trip with some buddies. They all have Taco's so I joined here so we could PM in a group. Then I just stuck around. It's a pretty good community for the most part and I also like to stir the pot on occasion. lol

 

Didn't say it wasn't hard, just not as hard as Rubicon I imagine. Never been to Rubicon, just hear a lot of hype. Also it helps that I run 35s and have an automatic. Makes wheeling a little easier even without lockers. Tacomas also have that traction control auto lsd thing that seems to help a bit.

 

Tell the Jeep to stay on the damn trail and not give the forest service reason to shut the place down. There's talk of closing Coyote Flat because it's overrun with people driving off road, camping wherever in illegal places (like that island camping person in this shot), and idiots rolling off the road down to Big Pine. There's been two rollovers in the past month and they had to heli-vac someone out this weekend.

 

There was a trail where he went up. Pretty well dug in. He definitely didn't blaze his own.

 

Seriously.. that smoke plume looks like a nuke went off. Never seen a fire that gnarly before.




All good reasons to be here, say hey if you see a red taco rolling round town ever. I'll keep an eye out for your 4runner

 

Just cause others did it doesn't make it a road... did it have a numbered USFS post or have a bunch of other posers blazed a trail for that same shot? Look at a USFS roads and trails map to know what's officially a road or not. Props to the tacos for staying on/near the road in that shot at least.

 

Me and another member here did the recovery of the first rollover. The guy that rolled was really honest about what happened. He tried to power through the 2nd obstacle and his ass end went down slope. Then the rest of the rig followed. He wasn't experienced enough to see it would happen and paid the price. He's a good dude that just fucked up.

After the recovery I talked to the FS. I let them know all debris was cleaned up and there was no fluids spilled. We took shovels and made the area as close to natural as we could after a recovery like that. They where very happy it got resolved and we made the effort to return the area to it's natural state.

I haven't heard about the 2nd rollover. Got a link?

Rigs about 60 feet down slope of the trail. He got very lucky and hit a rock that stopped what would have been a 200 yd roll.




Using my winch to hold tension and lower him back to all fours slowly. 4 of us where able to rock it onto the winch line. That's how steep it really is.