Naches, WA Trail Exploration

[H3slate]

Last year Scarsman and I ran the Naches Trail a lot during our trip. This left not enough time to do some exploring on the east side of the mountains and all the trails over there. So this year we made a plan to skip the Naches trail, setup a base camp on the east side of the mountains, and explore the trails. This would get us to the ever elusive Funny Rocks and Moon Rocks, and we would host a trail run for H4O on Saturday.

Scarsman and I met up at the Whistling Jack Lodge on Wednesday afternoon. We headed up the Little Naches River to find a good camp spot. We setup camp and played with our RC rock crawlers. I had to have my truck recovered from a roll over.



We had the coolest camp neighbors ever for the first two days. The National Guard was up there doing road repairs, and they brought all the good stuff.

 

[H3slate]

Thursday we set out to run the 676 trail that we got part way through last year. This trail is a long way in to Funny Rocks because the main trail had been washed out.

Half way up we ran into some fire fighters. They told us they were being pulled out of the area due to a forest fire on the other side of the ridge. We pulled out a map and they showed us the affected areas. It pretty much covered all of the areas that we wanted to explore. You could smell the smoke in the air, and at times you could see smoke over the ridge.

Disappointed but not defeated, we decided to go further east and try to find some other trails.

 

[H3slate]

We found a trail that was headed in the right direction to get to Funny Rocks from the other side. It was a very dusty trail.



Which led to a very steep hill with rocks and lots of dusty dirt. Scarsman made it up and I followed after him. It was tough going and hard to get traction. About half way up I was spinning my tires trying to get traction and I hear a loud pop from the front end. Scarsman came down to check it out. I thought it was just a rock. But it was my passenger side half shaft. I broke it clean off. Too much skinny pedal and not enough weight up front. Due to the angle of the hill I had to be winched down. My front tires were just sliding and not helping me turn where I needed to go.





Thanks to Scarsman and his boys, they got me safely down the hill. I turned around and headed down the hill. We were going to remove the half shaft on the forest road. When I got to the bottom of the hill I put it in gear and got no forward motion. I tried again and nothing. Tried changing out of 4 low and nothing. I had no forward or reverse.

We pushed my truck to a good spot and removed the half shaft. A storm was coming in and smoke from the fire, so we wanted to finish the repairs at camp. With no forward motion, Scarsman towed me back to camp.

After changing the half shaft which had sheared off,



My truck drove just fine. It shifted in and out of 4 low with no problem. At first I thought my plastic shift fork had broken, but now I think that the case somehow shifted out of locked, because we could get the front drive shaft to spin, but with the broken half shaft it wouldn't drive the truck.

 

[H3slate]

On Friday, we went to Boulder Cave. It was a short hike in and a small cave you could walk through. It has bats, but we didn't see any.



Unfortunately due to the fire, we had to cancel the trail run on Saturday. We spent a lot of time on the river playing with our RC crawlers. Saturday we crossed the river and tried to find a 4WD trail we saw on the map. It looks like it has been closed, we did find a mild trail to run while exploring.



We are already starting to plan next years trip, we are now better informed about what trails to run, and we will get to Funny Rocks next year!

 

[ArtHummer]

Seems like you guys had allot of fun. Even after the carnage...:thumbs:
Did you had a spare to replace the broken one?

 

[Scarsman]

It was disappointing to not get to hit any trails, except for the one we are calling H3struction Hill. Pretty much all the 4x4 trails are on one side of the valley there, and were all closed for the fire. But we had from anyway.

He did have a spare.

Sent from my C811 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

[H3slate]

Seems like you guys had allot of fun. Even after the carnage...:thumbs:
Did you had a spare to replace the broken one?

Thankfully, yes I did. Still not exactly sure what happened with the transfer case. It should have still driven without the front half shaft in either 4 low locked or 4 high locked.

I am just glad I got my RC rock crawler before the trip. We had so much fun running those with the kids.

 

[Scarsman]

I didn't really get much for pictures. I was in front, and almost all the driving we did was just plain service roads in the trees. My son is working on the video of the axle breaking. I'll post that up as soon as he finishes it.

Here is one pic looking down the hill just before the break:

Here are some from the cave:

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[Scarsman]

Here are a few of our replacement wheeling with the rc trucks. Gotta admit, it's a lot cheaper and easier to fix them! And they're a lot tougher!

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[ABNTROOP]

Very cool! Looks like you guys had a great time!

 

[MessiaH2]

Great post, looks awesome out there, thanks for sharing.

 

[2010H3TAlpha]

Sorry to hear about the challenges but I'm glad to see everyone made it home safely. I will definitely try to make the next meet!

 

[Scarsman]

Here is the video of the trail carnage. My 14 year old did the video editing on it. As always, the video does not really come close to actually showing just how steep the hill was. You can kind of get an idea by how I'm stumbling all over the place!

It's not really a very action filled video, but I think he did a good job of making it interesting with the editing.

[video=youtube;1O-NbAf67i0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O-NbAf67i0[/video]

 

[06 H3]

Great recovery!

Sucks to see you blow a CV. Do you have a 4:1 or rear locker?

After adding a winch to front end the traction is much better...I used to get that hop all the time, I cant say I dont anymore but I can certainly say it has lessened since the winch.

 

[MessiaH2]

NICE safe recovery guys. I could see it was steep and loose from the video and that could have went bad in a hurry. It is way cool your son did the video, he did a nice job and the James Bond music keeps ya watchin' even when we know it was slow going.

OMG I am having winch envy :bc8:

 

[Scarsman]

Thanks! He wasn't sure on his choice of music, but I told him he got it right on. I thought the into was pretty cool too!

As for the winch, I could not be happier with this Recon winch. I really don't think I could have found a better value. I've used it in heat, cold, wet, and it hasn't missed a beat. Well worth the $400!

Sent from my C811 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

[H3slate]

Great recovery!

Sucks to see you blow a CV. Do you have a 4:1 or rear locker?

After adding a winch to front end the traction is much better...I used to get that hop all the time, I cant say I dont anymore but I can certainly say it has lessened since the winch.

I have the 4:1 transfer case, rear locker, and manual transmission. I had the locker on and was in 4 low and first gear. Obviously my big mistake was the wheel spin. But there was very little traction and no weight on the front end. After the trip I put in extended shackles in the rear, so hopefully that will help keep my nose down until I get a winch bumper up front.