LIOR Trailride - Beacon & Old Chester

Long Island Off Road Trail Ride & Campout

Beacon & xxx Trails
Massachusetts
Friday, June 28 to Sunday, June 30, 2002
Reported by Doug Abrams

The first of the real summer heat waves had settled over the Northeast as the weekend approached. Loading up the Barkmobile was a sweaty affair, but we were ready to hit the road by 10:30 am on Friday the 28th. I met up with Hard-luck Bill L. on Long Island and we made it over the bridge by noon, where we met up with Bob Two-Jeeps and Mark the Silverback for the ride up to Chester. The ride up was fairly uneventful; I was having an overheating problem which, it turns out, was due to low coolant levels. Adding coolant to the reservoir is much cheaper than replacing the thermostat or flushing the radiator, by the way.
We were the first from LIOR to arrive at Walker Island, and began to set up camp as the rest of the group rolled in. Including the arrival of Trevor Fan-man in the wee hours of the morning we had 15 trucks there from LIOR: me in the Barkmobile (with Bark, of course), Mark Silverback in Snow White, Evan the Bear in EE Rex, “Wrecker” Reed in his blue toy, Big Crazy Eric C in his Tangerine Dream (all re-built, tube-tub and new locker and gears . . . lot of good that did), Scoutmaster Bob in Howler, Hard-luck Bill in his red TJ, Rich K. in his black TJ, Fan-man in his CJ hybrid the Fan-van, Mikey the Rat in his rat-YJ, Rocky Bulldog Pizza in his low-crawlin’ YJ, Bob Two-Jeeps in Overkill, without its big shoes, and in the biggest surprise of the ride, the return of Ted the Fed and Lucy in Teddy’s green TJ, back from the FBI Academy, ready to protect us from the terrorists. Early in the morning, on Saturday, Big Gene showed up in his green TJ, and Michael and Mike, who rode with us up at Ma Bell in April, joined us for the ride. In addition, two fellers from Eastern 4-Wheelers met us at Carm’s before the ride, Chu and Evan. All together we started out with 17 trucks on the trail, a lot of trucks for a run for anywhere, and a huge number of trucks to take up the Beacon trail.
Well, it turns out that the scouting report on Beacon that we got from our friends at East Coast 4X4 Experience was pretty accurate. The opening obstacles there, a couple of rock ledges at the start of the trail, had become even tougher through erosion and wear. I always thought of those two ledges as the perfect filter for this trail. If you’re having trouble getting over them, just turn around and go home, the rest of this trail will be impossible. We all made it over the opening obstacles without much trouble, except for Big Gene, who grenaded his rear hub and locker with minimal effort. He parked his TJ by the side of the trail and passengered for the rest of the day.
Now for the infamous “Mess-your-pants.” A double ledge, you have to approach from the right, move across from right to left as you mount the first ledge, and then ride high up on the bank to the left, extremely off-camber, coming back around to the right as you climb the second ledge. If you don’t get high enough up on the bank to left on the second ledge, the rock kicks you to the right and your rear slides into a hole just below the ledge. Any attempt to back out of here and try again drops the right rear tire into a deep hole, leading to a left front salute that, if not stopped in time, finishes as a roll over to the right rear. I watched Two-Jeeps, and then Fan-man, just miss rolling over when I decided, along with Ted the Fed and Rich K., to go around Mess-your-pants. My one regret for the day, but, then again, I drove out like I drove in, which is more than I can say for everyone who was there. Like my Daddy always told me; “Discretion is the better part of valor.

Big Eric & Rich K. hold down the Fan-Man
Mike rides the wall on Mess Your Pants
Bulldog

Hard-Luck Bill. Why is this man smiling?
Overkill at the Pinacle
Overkill on the right side line We wound our way up the steep trail, went by the turn-off to the “Waterfall” and continued on to “the Pinnacle.” Eric was leading the way, and using his climb it one side at a time method, rolled up over the first big step and then climbed the second. I do not know if anyone else made it up over the Pinnacle without winching. I watched Evan, then Mark, then Ted turn for the Pinnacle bypass, so I dropped down behind them. Evan made it up to the top, but Mark got hung up just below the crest of the bypass and had to pull cable to get over the top. So did Ted, but I thought I saw where they were getting caught, so I put a little vehicle speed behind my rush up behind Ted and almost made it over before being rebuffed by the crest of the bypass. Ted asked if I wanted to pull cable, but I asked if there wasn’t something I could try first. Ted said, “Try backing down, get over to the left, right into that groove there. When you start to come up give a little gas and turn to the right, you might get over the rock.” I followed Teddy’s spotting, except I gave a good punch as I came up and blasted over the crest, sliding back to the left before coming to a stop . . . at the top of the Pinnacle bypass, of course.
Mike the Rat followed me up that hill and decided he was going to do it in one shot. He got up some vehicle speed and blasted up that hill, careening off the sides of the ditch in which the trail lay, bouncing up onto his right wheels as he crested the hill (which elicited a scream of terror from his passenger Kristen) and calmly rolled to a stop at the top of the hill. Mike should get an award for eliciting the only scream of the day. It only took us 8 minutes to pry Kristen’s hands from the oh-sh** handle on Mike’s dash.
We stopped to eat lunch as the last truck worked its way up over the Pinnacle, and then we turned around and headed down the mountain towards the Waterfall for those brave enough to try it. I pulled off by the turn-off and tried to remedy the bad headache I’d been dealing with all day by falling asleep in my truck. It did help my headache, but I missed the fun over at the Waterfall, though I have seen the video. Bob Two-Jeeps broke the yoke of his rear drive shaft, only did not realize it until he got out on the pavement. Later that evening, Evan the Bear wanted to see just what Two-Jeeps’ Overkill with the supercharged V-8 could do, so they took it out onto pavement . . . and discovered that it could throw the rear drive shaft right out onto the highway. Big Eric also attacked the Waterfall without mercy, and it attacked back without mercy. I may have this wrong, but the damage included broken hub & Birfield, grenaded Detroit locker out back, and drive shaft destruction. He literally made his truck jump three to four feet straight up in the air, like a pronking antelope. When it came down . . BANG!! And Eric said that today he wasn’t going to hammer it up over the Waterfall, finesse all the way. I don’t think he should ever try to do surgery. (Actually, there is a good story about Eric doing self-surgury -Ed.)
We began spilling off the mountain in the afternoon, heading back to camp to clean up and burn meat. Grills got fired up, coolers pulled out and the general fireside hilarity began. No mass hiding in the woods this year, and generally good behavior from so many guys: we DID have a record number of women along, maybe that’s why. Anyway, the crowd finally thinned out around midnight, I know I slunk off to bed at around 1:00.
Boy, Sunday morning sometimes comes really early. I was up brewing coffee at around 7:00, but there wasn’t much movement around me. It was already becoming clear that a lot of people were not making it to xxx Trail this day. In fact, we ended up with six trucks on the trail, including Chen the Madman, who came up Sunday morning, and a newbie named Roman in a stock TJ Sahara, who came up from Brooklyn to check out trailriding with LIOR. I know many ‘wheelers look at xxx Trail with a little distain, too easy. The middle section of it, just above the side trail called “Rock and a Hard Place,” has gotten to be, well, not difficult, but it definitely takes attention to get through. It is at the absolute limit of a stock vehicle, and we had to tug Roman a number of times. Even with a late start and some time for Scoutmaster Bob, Mike and Trevor to play in Rock and a Hard Place, we were out of the trail by 2:30-3:00. Trev, Bob and Mike went back to Walker Island to hook up to their tow-vehicles, Chen and I just headed back down Rte 8 towards the metro area. I had an amazingly trouble-free ride home, with almost no traffic at all (on a sunny Sunday afternoon, expecting lots of weekend traffic). I was unloading my Jeep by 7:30 PM and eating dinner shortly after that. It was a totally fantastic weekend. Enough carnage to be memorable, no one got hurt and the camaraderie of the trail lingering through Sunday evening.
This is your pres and fearless Poobah bidding you farewell until next time, and remember: Keep it rubber down, paint up.

The first of the real summer heat waves had settled over the Northeast as the weekend approached. Loading up the Barkmobile was a sweaty affair, but we were ready to hit the road by 10:30 am on Friday the 28th. I met up with Hard-luck Bill L. on Long Island and we made it over the bridge by noon, where we met up with Bob Two-Jeeps and Mark the Silverback for the ride up to Chester. The ride up was fairly uneventful; I was having an overheating problem which, it turns out, was due to low coolant levels. Adding coolant to the reservoir is much cheaper than replacing the thermostat or flushing the radiator, by the way. We were the first from LIOR to arrive at Walker Island, and began to set up camp as the rest of the group rolled in. Including the arrival of Trevor Fan-man in the wee hours of the morning we had 15 trucks there from LIOR: me in the Barkmobile (with Bark, of course), Mark Silverback in Snow White, Evan the Bear in EE Rex, “Wrecker” Reed in his blue toy, Big Crazy Eric C in his Tangerine Dream (all re-built, tube-tub and new locker and gears . . . lot of good that did), Scoutmaster Bob in Howler, Hard-luck Bill in his red TJ, Rich K. in his black TJ, Fan-man in his CJ hybrid the Fan-van, Mikey the Rat in his rat-YJ, Rocky Bulldog Pizza in his low-crawlin’ YJ, Bob Two-Jeeps in Overkill, without its big shoes, and in the biggest surprise of the ride, the return of Ted the Fed and Lucy in Teddy’s green TJ, back from the FBI Academy, ready to protect us from the terrorists. Early in the morning, on Saturday, Big Gene showed up in his green TJ, and Michael and Mike, who rode with us up at Ma Bell in April, joined us for the ride. In addition, two fellers from Eastern 4-Wheelers met us at Carm’s before the ride, Chu and Evan. All together we started out with 17 trucks on the trail, a lot of trucks for a run for anywhere, and a huge number of trucks to take up the Beacon trail. Well, it turns out that the scouting report on Beacon that we got from our friends at East Coast 4X4 Experience was pretty accurate. The opening obstacles there, a couple of rock ledges at the start of the trail, had become even tougher through erosion and wear. I always thought of those two ledges as the perfect filter for this trail. If you’re having trouble getting over them, just turn around and go home, the rest of this trail will be impossible. We all made it over the opening obstacles without much trouble, except for Big Gene, who grenaded his rear hub and locker with minimal effort. He parked his TJ by the side of the trail and passengered for the rest of the day. Now for the infamous “Mess-your-pants.” A double ledge, you have to approach from the right, move across from right to left as you mount the first ledge, and then ride high up on the bank to the left, extremely off-camber, coming back around to the right as you climb the second ledge. If you don’t get high enough up on the bank to left on the second ledge, the rock kicks you to the right and your rear slides into a hole just below the ledge. Any attempt to back out of here and try again drops the right rear tire into a deep hole, leading to a left front salute that, if not stopped in time, finishes as a roll over to the right rear. I watched Two-Jeeps, and then Fan-man, just miss rolling over when I decided, along with Ted the Fed and Rich K., to go around Mess-your-pants. My one regret for the day, but, then again, I drove out like I drove in, which is more than I can say for everyone who was there. Like my Daddy always told me; “Discretion is the better part of valor.	Big Eric & Rich K. hold down the Fan-Man Mike rides the wall on Mess Your Pants Bulldog

Hard-Luck Bill. Why is this man smiling? Overkill at the Pinacle Overkill on the right side line	We wound our way up the steep trail, went by the turn-off to the “Waterfall” and continued on to “the Pinnacle.” Eric was leading the way, and using his climb it one side at a time method, rolled up over the first big step and then climbed the second. I do not know if anyone else made it up over the Pinnacle without winching. I watched Evan, then Mark, then Ted turn for the Pinnacle bypass, so I dropped down behind them. Evan made it up to the top, but Mark got hung up just below the crest of the bypass and had to pull cable to get over the top. So did Ted, but I thought I saw where they were getting caught, so I put a little vehicle speed behind my rush up behind Ted and almost made it over before being rebuffed by the crest of the bypass. Ted asked if I wanted to pull cable, but I asked if there wasn’t something I could try first. Ted said, “Try backing down, get over to the left, right into that groove there. When you start to come up give a little gas and turn to the right, you might get over the rock.” I followed Teddy’s spotting, except I gave a good punch as I came up and blasted over the crest, sliding back to the left before coming to a stop . . . at the top of the Pinnacle bypass, of course. Mike the Rat followed me up that hill and decided he was going to do it in one shot. He got up some vehicle speed and blasted up that hill, careening off the sides of the ditch in which the trail lay, bouncing up onto his right wheels as he crested the hill (which elicited a scream of terror from his passenger Kristen) and calmly rolled to a stop at the top of the hill. Mike should get an award for eliciting the only scream of the day. It only took us 8 minutes to pry Kristen’s hands from the oh-sh** handle on Mike’s dash. We stopped to eat lunch as the last truck worked its way up over the Pinnacle, and then we turned around and headed down the mountain towards the Waterfall for those brave enough to try it. I pulled off by the turn-off and tried to remedy the bad headache I’d been dealing with all day by falling asleep in my truck. It did help my headache, but I missed the fun over at the Waterfall, though I have seen the video. Bob Two-Jeeps broke the yoke of his rear drive shaft, only did not realize it until he got out on the pavement. Later that evening, Evan the Bear wanted to see just what Two-Jeeps’ Overkill with the supercharged V-8 could do, so they took it out onto pavement . . . and discovered that it could throw the rear drive shaft right out onto the highway. Big Eric also attacked the Waterfall without mercy, and it attacked back without mercy. I may have this wrong, but the damage included broken hub & Birfield, grenaded Detroit locker out back, and drive shaft destruction. He literally made his truck jump three to four feet straight up in the air, like a pronking antelope. When it came down . . BANG!! And Eric said that today he wasn’t going to hammer it up over the Waterfall, finesse all the way. I don’t think he should ever try to do surgery. (Actually, there is a good story about Eric doing self-surgury -Ed.) We began spilling off the mountain in the afternoon, heading back to camp to clean up and burn meat. Grills got fired up, coolers pulled out and the general fireside hilarity began. No mass hiding in the woods this year, and generally good behavior from so many guys: we DID have a record number of women along, maybe that’s why. Anyway, the crowd finally thinned out around midnight, I know I slunk off to bed at around 1:00. Boy, Sunday morning sometimes comes really early. I was up brewing coffee at around 7:00, but there wasn’t much movement around me. It was already becoming clear that a lot of people were not making it to xxx Trail this day. In fact, we ended up with six trucks on the trail, including Chen the Madman, who came up Sunday morning, and a newbie named Roman in a stock TJ Sahara, who came up from Brooklyn to check out trailriding with LIOR. I know many ‘wheelers look at xxx Trail with a little distain, too easy. The middle section of it, just above the side trail called “Rock and a Hard Place,” has gotten to be, well, not difficult, but it definitely takes attention to get through. It is at the absolute limit of a stock vehicle, and we had to tug Roman a number of times. Even with a late start and some time for Scoutmaster Bob, Mike and Trevor to play in Rock and a Hard Place, we were out of the trail by 2:30-3:00. Trev, Bob and Mike went back to Walker Island to hook up to their tow-vehicles, Chen and I just headed back down Rte 8 towards the metro area. I had an amazingly trouble-free ride home, with almost no traffic at all (on a sunny Sunday afternoon, expecting lots of weekend traffic). I was unloading my Jeep by 7:30 PM and eating dinner shortly after that. It was a totally fantastic weekend. Enough carnage to be memorable, no one got hurt and the camaraderie of the trail lingering through Sunday evening. This is your pres and fearless Poobah bidding you farewell until next time, and remember: Keep it rubber down, paint up.