April 3rd, 2004

Mountain, WI - The pipeline

This trip was setup on the jeepboard by Gary as a meet and greet. We only had one extra jeep since it was still too early for everyone to have their vehicles up and running and ready to wheel. Gary confused us all by saying he was leaving Friday night. The plan was to meet up on Saturday morning in Mountain.

I decided to meet Gary at the Bear Paw boat lading on Friday evening after work. When I got there Gary was relieved 'cause he had dropped his cell-phone when collecting wood and wasn't able to find it. After that we collected some more firewood, I realized that I didn't bring my winch remote so I wasn't going to be able to test it out. We sat around for a little bit before heading to bed. Since it was so late, I didn't have a chance to find a dry spot to setup my tent so Gary and I spend a cozy night in his.

In the morning I found that I had kept Gary up most of the night due to my snoreing. We proceeded to meet up with Kieth and Ken. They arrived within about 5 minutes of us getting there, we setup camp and decided to hit the trails. The first real wheel'n spot we got to was the back-side (bottom) of the large rocky hill that I've went down several time. On this trip it was snow covered. Just to get there all three of us had some difficultly with the snow. I must say, while still being difficult my tires really did the job. Gary was leading so he attempted to get up the hill, but the snow instantly turned to ice under the tires and make it impossible to get any further. When backing up to take another run at it, Gary found himself stuck. Using Ken's jeep. The snow kept pulling Gary into the hole he fell in and made it extremely challenging. We got Gary out and decided we were going to head elsewhere

Around 11:00 we needed to meet up with Aaron and his friend's who were going to come with us. Gary and I split with Ken and Kieth who went to lunch ahead of us. Gary and I hit another section of the pipeline to meet up with Aaron. Once we meet up we all headed to eat. On the way, Arron's buddy ran out of gas. Gary and I ate and then we headed back to our campground with Aaron and his buddies.

When we arrived at the campground we decided it would be a good idea to collect firewood so we didn't have to do it once it got dark out. Aaron and crew didn't like our choice of spots and decided to head out, do some wheeling and meet up with us later. We headed out shortly after but never caught up with them. The trails were pretty easy but in spots got fun, we each took turns leading and didn't get a chance to take many pictures.

We ended the day around 4:00ish and started heading back so we weren't out in the dark. We got back to camp, quickly got a fire going, had several adult beverages, cooked over the fire (Thanks for the Brat!) and went to bed.

Over all I had a great time, and I think everyone else did as well. Can't wait to go wheeling with ya'll again!