E4W Florida Vacation |
Bear Mountain |
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Top of the World & A Road |
Private Land, NH |
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Florida, MA |
July 18, 2004 |
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July 17, 2004 |
Reported by Doug Abrams |
Photos by Bob Blair |
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The guys at Eastern 4-Wheelers have gotten this Florida Vacation thing down pretty good. It’s well organized, Paul and Claudia Taranto put in just the right amount of time and effort to make the whole thing work, and Dave Brill has the magic touch in getting good raffle prizes. Paul still needs to get a little better at pulling numbers; even though I won a few prizes at the raffle, I did NOT get my new set of tires . . . This year Florida Vacation offered some new trails; Bear Mountain, A Road, and Top of the World were three new trails offered. Bear Mountain is considered an extreme trail, and though I did not run it I heard it is a good trail with many slimy rock challenges. In fact, the rainy weather that preceded the weekend (and held off throughout the weekend) added an extra layer of slimy mud to all the trails. On Saturday morning I joined the group running Top of the World, an old unmaintained town road in Florida that runs up to the top of a mountain with sweeping views of the canyon that is formed by the confluence of Cold River and the Deerfield River in western Massachusetts. Top of the World is rated as a moderate trail. Stock vehicles CAN do it, but will definitely risk body damage (in fact, two stock trucks (an XJ and a ZJ) that ran the trail lost rocker panels and plastic body trim to the granite demons of the trail). The obstacles on the trail are mostly rock ledges that have eroded out from under whatever graded road surface was originally there. There are interesting wash-outs that make for some tippy and off-camber sections, and lots of opportunities to try to show your undercarriage to the birds. Scoutmaster Blair tried to drop his “Willscoutys” on its side once, balancing precariously on two wheels until he managed to simply (and veeeerrrryy carefully) drive out of the gully into which he’d dropped his right side (Joan was smiling, but there was a tension in the smile that wasn’t ALL happiness). He also tried driving directly through a tree that obnoxiously jumped right in front of his truck as he slid off the tougher (meaning wrong) line of a ledge while coming back down the mountain, ended up winching his front end sideways until he could clear the tree. “Thrasher” Blair tried playing Monster Truck with a wrecked car down in the woods, but couldn’t quite make it up over the car. We were down off that trail by 2:30 Saturday afternoon, and after a short break back at the Mohawk Park Campground (headquarters for the event), we headed out for A Road, another unmaintained town road that climbed up between two peaks south of the Mohawk Trail, coming out in a divine set of valleys cradling small farms, with ripe hayfields shimmering with a scattering of wildflowers in the burnished sunlight of the late afternoon. A Road is a short trail, perhaps a mile and a half. Much of it is little more than a deep, severely eroded rock and boulder strewn gully, with a few places where large boulders hanging out of the gully walls made for twisty tight squeezes. We were held up on this trail for about a half hour when a truck broke down; a relatively quick fix got it to the point where it could be driven out and back to the Mohawk Park Campground, but several people, among them Scoutmaster Blair, were working on that truck until almost 10:00 pm, welding control arms back together. Once again we were treated to a fine banquet (actually I was so ready for dinner by the time the banquet started I would have liked anything they served . . . except Brussels sprouts). Bobby “Two-Jeeps” got beaned not once but twice by license plate frames flung out into the crowd as prizes by Dave Brill. After dinner a pretty decent rock and roll band started playing in the place, and after hanging out for a while, those of us who were still vertical, took a rid up the mountain to the Whitcomb Summit Motel, where I was staying because the campground doesn’t allow dogs, and the Blairs were staying because, well, Joan doesn’t camp. We hung out for while, and as I started to fade the rest of the people there scattered; the Blairs back across the road to the main part of the motel, and Hard-luck Bill and Janey back down to the campground. I didn’t wheel on Sunday, but chose to take off early to beat the weather and late Sunday traffic. I got home about 2:00 pm, time enough for a nap before dinner. Once again E4W put on a great event. If you missed it this year, don’t next. Coming up is “On the Rocks 2004”; don’t miss this, and remember, keep it paint up rubber down! |
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