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December 23, 2001
Mountain, WI - The pipeline
I left Oshkosh at 9:00 AM. My friend and my girl friend were going to come along but had change of plans at the last minute. I meet Gary Reed and his buddy Aaron, both jeep owners, in Green Bay just after 10:00.
We
got up to the first little trail and found that it was ice covered, well all the
puddles we ice covered. This made getting through them, that much more
difficult because you had to break through the ice.
Aaron, with his new lift and more aggressive tires was the first to try it.
Click here to see the rest of the pictures
The trails we interesting because all of the mud/water was now ice covered puddles didn't allow you to test and see how deep the puddle
was before you started across it. Aaron was usually the first one across. In the picture to the left we decided to go around the the right
side because we thought it was too deep. Aaron made it through with little to no problem. I was next with a larger heavier vehicle. I tried to
stay off to the right even more.
After the two of us we across, Gary decided he'd try to go straight through it. Well, I guess the ice was a little thicker than we thought. As Gary's jeep (right) makes it across without even breaking the ice.
Trying to show the Jeep boys that my Explorer kept up, I tried everything that they did, well within reason anyways. Here is the series of my truck pictures.
The rest of the day went pretty good. Gary and Aaron got stuck a couple
of times and I learned a lot about off-roading and my Explorer's ability.
I had to do a few modification along the way to to ground clearance. I guess
when you put plastic against ice; ice wins
Toward the end of the trip, Aaron decided he had to try to climb a certain
spot. He got down the first rock/hill/bluff. It was crazy either
way. Got up another section. and then couldn't make it the rest of
the way. The almost freezing rain didn't help any either.
Giving up he decided to back down. This didn't work so well because the slippery
rocks had wedged him in further. Being my first trip I figured he wasn't
going to make it home this time. Gary brought his Jeep down because
it looked like we would have to try and high-lift him or figure some way to get
him out.
Aaron decided that before that he would try to power up the hill/cliff to try and get a better angle to get down. While being a difficult, slow task, he managed to get it out.
Click here to see how bad it was.
Thanks again guys for the great time.