Long Island Off Road Trail Ride

Stone Gardens is on private property. It is the largest operating farm and plot of undeveloped land in this area of Connecticut, and it is hard to believe it is so close to the metropolitan morass of New York City. The terrain is rolling ridges creased by deeply cut stream beds. Heavily wooded with third or even fourth growth forest, few large trees but dense understory studded with rock outcroppings along the slopes of the ridges. A short ride from the meeting place, we rolled into the farmyard, waved to Rudy our host/landowner as we and moved down into a field to air-down and disconnect sway bars. There were a lot of the usual faces at the trail ride and many members we hadn’t seen in a while. As I was airing down the first group took off for the “tougher” of two loops of trails our pals at E4W had cut. Our group of 14 trucks then started out into the woods; I was running tailgunner, intending to follow the first group. When we got to the split we found that the first group was moving slower than we expected so we swung to the other trail loop for the morning.

When Paul T., president of E4W, told me that Adrian had cut the trails I was expecting the worst (or best, depending on how extreme you like to get) but Paul’s reassurance that he had cut the go-arounds as reasonable trails bore out to be valid and the trails offered a variety of levels depending on the line one chose. The trail twisted through the woods, winding around trees and through outcroppings and piles of rocks that had been made when this part of the farm had been cleared. Cattle wandered through the woods, lowing in protest at our invasion of their usually peaceful surroundings. At the first significant obstacle the trail dropped over a short steep hill, turned to the right and then presented an obstacle just off the main trail that was a series of rock steps back up the hill. A few tried it, I think only Bobby Two-Jeeps (driving Overkill) made. As with all the obstacles the newness of the trails (we were only the 4th run on this trail) left a thin layer of dirt over most of the obstacles. Combined with the heavy rain dropped on the area by Isabel only a day earlier this left a coating of greasy mud over everything. The greatest difficulty of the day was finding traction. After attempting another side-obstacle that Paul claimed I would have an advantage on (because of the longer wheel-base of the Bark-mobile), and still just spinning tires in the greasy mud, I moved up behind the line of trucks where the entire group ground to a halt in front of the last major obstacle of the morning.

Here the trail climbed a hill, curving first to the left and then turning hard to the right and ascending a rocky outcropping where again the most difficult part of the climb was finding enough traction. The first few trucks climbed the rocks, but by then the mud had become greasy and everyone else had to struggle up the rocks. It was t this point that Joe L.’s TJ began to balk at being driven, and after about 40 minutes of checking it out, with a little tug from the top, Joe made it up the rock pile. Beyond this were a couple of ledges and then the open field/dinosaur graveyard. Rudy, apparently, is quite the collector, and in this back field were a number of old cable-pulley shovels and backhoes varying from huge to truck mounted. Winding through that field was like driving through the ruins of an ancient civilization, or a dinosaur graveyard. Here we regained the main access road and started back into the woods, where we stopped for lunch and to give the first group a little more time to get out of the first loop.

This loop started by dropping down into a muddy rocky section of trail and then climbed back into upland woods. Again the trail ground to a halt as we hit another obstacle rendered nearly impassable by the greasy mud. A short steep hill was topped by a 18 to 30 inch rock ledge which, if dry, would pose little difficulty in climbing. The first couple of trucks made it up over the ledge by taking the line to the right, where the ledge was only about 18 inches. By the time several trucks made it up over the ledge the greasy mud was fairly well distributed over the whole thing and almost everyone else had to pull cable to get up over the ledge. Evan the Bear, in good ol’ EE Rex tried a line to the left and made it up over the ledge but ended up on top, slightly hung up, with his left side up on a rock outcropping. His spotter, Mr. Two-Jeeps then told him to just punch it a little and he’d just pop off the rocks. It kind of worked, but what I saw form down below and at the end of the line was EE Res leap a little and then flip hard and fast to the right, once again landing EE Rex on its side. This was no gentle slow roll-over; the truck flipped so quickly it catapulted stuff out of the back and a good 30 feet into the woods. Evan stumbled out cussing and swearing but there was no damage and four or five guys righted the beast with a heave ho and the fun continued.

At this point the Silvermans and a few others who had to make the 4:00 ferry departed, guided out by Paul, and the rest of us worked our way up the ledge, finishing just as Paul got back. Here the Holton gang ran into trouble, with Jim Holton’s truck refusing to start. Jim, time to switch over to fuel injection, pal; carburetors don’t like extreme angles. So now we reached the point where we were down to four trucks on our trail: me, “Hard-luck Bill”, Scoutmaster Bob, and Paul Taranto in his full size Bronco. From here we went to the “Big Hill,” a steep dirt hill with a large tree right in the middle at the top. To the left of the tree were some deep ruts that made one’s truck want to go to the right, into the tree where a big root would catch the right rear wheel an spin your truck to the right. The line up to the right of the tree was nearly impossible as there was no traction on the lower part of the hill, leaving you spinning wheels even before reaching the tree.

After several energetic attempts Paul went around to the go-around to have a truck up at the top, with good reason. Next Bill started up the hill, hammering it good to clear the ruts at the top. He did snag his right rear, where he really layed into it, snapping his truck to the right and into a side-hill position and slamming his right side into the tree. In fact, the only ting keeping Bill from a long downhill roll-over (and over and over) was that he was jammed hard into the tree, damaging his right door and rocker panel. Paul winched him into a more manageable position and Bill crested the hill. Scoutmaster Bob then ascended the hill in his “Will-out-ys,” clearing the crest, and then it was my turn. I semi-hammered up the hill, losing traction just even with the tree. I backed down far enough to regain traction, and noting that the problem was in staying too far to the right. Using a little more foot I beat it up the hill, aiming straight for the ruts, staying to the left, popped up over the ruts with little difficulty and clearing the crest on only my second try. It felt good.

Paul then took us down to a gnarly little rock garden which, feeling enamored of my tie-rod, I by-passed and from here we wound on out and back up to the main field. Here we went back down into the second loop, the one we did in the morning, to watch the other group finish up the trail at the greasy rock outcropping.

The sun was drawing near to the horizon by the time we got back up into the field to air-up and reconnect. A light haze veiled the deep creases that separated the rolling ridge tops as they flowed away from us into the southwest, tinted gold by the setting sun. It was hard to believe that this was in Connecticut less than an hour from New York City. Everyone was quite pleased with the day. Good fun, great trails, getting better with each pass over them. We can’t thank our friends up at E4W enough for sharing this great resource with us, especially thanks to Paul Taranto and Adrian Dognin for their wonderful job hosting and leading us through. It is sincerely hoped that we can make this trail a part of our regular repertoire.

Once again, a great day of ‘wheeling. Until next time, remember, keep it rubber down, paint up, and be SAFE!