The sixth time is the charm. Last Friday (2/18) we did our 6th run since mid December breaking Sailor Point and we finally got all the way through!! Don not planning another pre run.
Attending:
Don
Gary and Debbie
Tom
John and friend Dennis
Ken and Abby
Martin
Gil
Jeff
From Don:
I would like to thank this crew, all the crews that helped break though Sailor Point, and all who helped out,
We met at Lang Rd and Sailor Point and, after airing down, had a small ceremony presenting Gil with the Bell. It was good to pass it on :-).
We headed to the luge about 9:45am encountering a lot of hard ice snow and berms along the way. Then, the first hill was a challenge - between ice and soft snow requiring winching a few rigs up
the first step. After that it was good going up to the top and to the meadows. I took a fun challenging route through the berms and it took a lot of strapping and breaking to make it through the soft snow. Meanwhile Gary broke a bypass which we will use for the run. After that there were a few berms to break down and tree and brush clearing to about 1/2 mile from the lookout where we broke for lunch. After lunch we had a good run out to Texas Hill Rd.
Tom and John headed back and the rest of us decided to check out an alternate up to Black Mountain. The road was clear to the flat area coming into Onion Valley which had hard packed snow and ice. It was clear of snow past Onion Valley (FR 42?) until the turn up towards Black Mountain, but we did have to clear a number of trees. The trail up to Black Mountain was great unbroken snow and we almost made it to the gate when came across a number of down trees. It was getting late so we headed back out through Texas Hill Rd.
Just before the climb out we encountered a pickup with tent camper really stuck in the snow. Gary pulled him out and we escorted him to the school house. We were off the trail about 5:30pm. It was a great day and a lot of fun with a reasonable amount of getting stuck by most of us. It looks like about a foot of snow is forecast for this week, which could possibly make the trail a really great WFF run.
The best description I have for this trail this year is brutal. The trail is open but should be rated close to extreme. It should be a tough, challenging, technical, but fun, run. It will possibly require winching, and climbing and descending step berms. I put the minimum requirements as 33" tires, lockers front and rear, and a winch; along with all the other trail requirements.