Squeaky Penguin's (Trip Reports) Build Thread

Looking good so far!

 

I should've paid better attention to the planning...
One of the first things I would have done would be to download the gpx from trail damage to put on my gps

 

Nice!

We'll be going through Alstom, Left Hand Collet, Hole in the Rock Road, and Burr Trail as well. Can't believe you did North Rim too. I'm planning on that being a completely separate trip one day. How many days was your trip?

As far as the route, I followed it closely with some variations on my own. Tried my best to find all the interesting points near the route.

 

Too bad you didn't have months and months to prepare.

10 day trip if you count our first day to drive to the HITR trailhead.

Can't go wrong out there, I'm sure you'll enjoy the trip!

 

Awesome stuff, Brett!

Makes me pretty damn homesick.

 

Sounds like you made great time during the trip. We'll be doing 7 days from St. George to Mexican Hat.

Thanks! Looking forward to the rest of your pictures.

 

How was hole in the rock though? I was not happy we didn't get to finish it. The ending good?

 

You made it through all the Grey Mesa section correct?

That was the best part, IMO. Really cool seeing how that road was blasted into the hillside. After that was some high speed stuff, a cool view of the San Juan, a few more obstacles that didn't present much of an issues, and then a sweet view from the end. Definitely need two days to complete the whole trail.

 

Yeah its long. Longer then I thought.

We turned around right after the semi sketchy washed out hill climb ay Dunbar. Where the large camp spot is. Really wanted to see the end though.

 

What is Dunbar? Saw your pic of the "big" ledge, did you go up the Grey Mesa section Brett mentioned above or is that what you mean by Dunbar? To me, the best part of the trail was the last 1/3 of the trail from the few obstacles before that ledge to the end, much more interesting and a bit challenging than the first 2/3.

 

Be sure to check out the Grand Ledge after alstrom, more challenging and a great view out there. Adds 4 or 5 hours from the turn up Smokey Mountain which connects Alstrom and LH Collett.

 

That's about how my attempts went so I gave up as well, also makes you appreciate a good unedited picture, even if you take it by accident.

 

Grand Bench, not Grand Ledge. And agreed, that's worth the extra time.

Noticed it was on trail damage:

https://www.traildamage.com/trails/index.php?id=482

I would say their rating of 3 is way off though. Going in and out of that canyon was fairly technical.

 

Bench, ledge, whatever . We ran past too many of either to keep them straight in my head.

They did add this disclaimer though:

Getting down into it is easy enough, but getting out the other side can be challenging. It is very steep in spots, and if this area is at all wet it is probably impassable.

Still need to pull all my pics from the Cannon, only gone through the phone so far, but here are a few from the ascent and descent to the bench

 

Looks like an awesome trip, looking forward to a full report. I stayed on Powell for 10 days with my family in a house boat when I was a kid. One of the best experiences/family trips of my life.

 

Tossed a NAPA reman power steering pump in this weekend based on a positive review from @Star-Lord , the fact that they had one in stock, and it was a 1/3 the price as OEM. So far so good, and the truck sounds much better. Hopefully it holds up, any issues and I'm jumping straight to an OEM unit though.


Oh, and hope you don't mind getting a little tippy on HITR:

Tippy on HITR by brettbjorgum, on Flickr

 

That spot was a bit of a squeeze of the buttocks moment haha

 

Yep. I squeezed tight against the wall on the slickrock coming up. Just barely made that line, the 2nd gens couldn't do it.

We decided to go straight down it. Worked out fine, but didn't feel so great.

Moving this in here as to not deter any potential buyers.

I might have been able to gain a very, very small amount of travel with the longer shackles, but only by allowing the leafs to go even further negative. I thought I learned all this the last go around, but I needed to try one more time to wrap my head around it.

Essentially, all it accomplished was moving the axle further away from the frame. There's no gains to be had based on the length of the leafs. So, if doing it correctly, you have exactly the same travel numbers, just down further.

It would also still leave me with all the negatives of the longer shackles like poor shackle angles, preloaded leafs, and bad pinion angle.

 

Yeah I went up and down the side with the wall.

Yeah , been thinking of getting shackles and getting a longer leaf pack to go with them.

Not in the cards now but was just curious.

 

Unless you're crawling, and only care about downtravel, I don't think there's any practical benefits of longer leafs that are still SOA.