Long Island Off Road Club Trailride

MaBell, MA November, 2008

by Ted C.

I knew MaBell would be one of 'those' runs when I woke up in the hotel in Hadley to a forecast of rain and wind. I was not to be disappointed.

I got to the parking area early to find that someone had apparently driven a large house with two Jeeps behind it to the meeting spot. It was Matt and Stephanie in their RV with their two Jeeps on a large trailer behind it. The diesel of my tow rig likely woke them up and I said my hellos before heading across the street for a hearty breakfast at the diner.

After breakfast I was able to get everything squared away for the trail rig-only run over to the trailhead in groups. I donned full raingear, as my Jeep only has a bikini top now, and I needed the raingear for most of the day. We had about nine rigs to start, though that number would be winnowed down by the end of the day.

Problems at the trailhead were a portent of things to come. Gene, in the late model Green Wrangler, could not get his Warn winch/air compressor working. We had to just wind ten feet of cable around the bumper and tell him he had to live without it. Then Stephanie put her Jeep into 4WD and things got worse. It made an ominous hollow thudding noise over and over as it was being driven. The noise seemed like it was coming from the transfer case. Matt was able to convince her to ditch the rig at the trailhead and ride with him.

The first couple obstacles went well, and everyone did bypass the now forbidden mudhole. At that point we got to the rocky hillclimb. I just did not recall this obstacle, and it was hard. It is a two part obstacle: a rockgarden type hillclimb with a bailout to the bypass just before a really scary looking step up ledge, and this initial hillclimb itself could be avoided with the bypass. I made repeated attempts to make it up under wheel power only, but it was like driving over grease; or more accurately big greased rocks. I winched up and bypassed the ledge. Most people took the bypass, but a few made it up the climb, many of them without having to winch. No one even considered the ledge.

A few words about the bypass to this obstacle are in order. Bypass here should be seen as a relative term. The bypass is only marginally more manageable than the main obstacle. I knew that under the current conditions it was no place for a stock truck, and Phil decided to leave his immaculate stock Mercedes G wagon at the bottom of the hill and walk with us the rest of the way.

As most of the rigs started to bunch up at the top of the bypass I started to move the front of the line. The next few obstacles were all step up type ledges with pretty tame bypasses. I bypassed none of them, and actually found that the tires would stick pretty well if you let them spin on the rocks and warm up a little. The last in the series requires that you stick tight to the right and turn hard left at the top, or you risk a roll on the driver's side. I got way too tipped over to be comfortable but was able to save it with some hard throttle as I drove into the impending roll.

After this near miss I pulled up and started to let the group catch up. We learned that Matt was having some mechanical problems. One would think that a family that brings and entire spare Jeep to a trail ride is well equipped, but his motor mount was shot and the motor itself cocked sideways at an angle. He tried to run for a bit longer with the motor chained down but soon informed us that he was done and was heading back to the trailhead. It had also started raining harder, and Phil and his buddy decided that a warm, dry Mercedes was better than a walk uphill in the rain.

MaBell was, however, not through with Matt (or us) yet. Before departing, Matt helped Gene field repair his sway bar. Somehow a front sway bar link had gotten bent and wrapped itself around the axle tube. I only got a chance to look at it after, but it appears that some BFH work bent everything back to something like original shape. Gene made his way up, and made it though the obstacle I almost rolled on with flair. He got turned totally sideways to the hill. Gene kept his head and followed a series of detailed, precise spotting instructions to get out of that predicament. That was one of those instances that could have turned ugly had the driver not listened to and carefully followed spotting instructions.

It was getting to be about noon, and I think I overshot the turn around, but not by much. That one scary downhill somewhat before where we used to turn around looks even scarier, but is actually safer going downhill than it ever has been. It has gotten so dug out that if you were to start to roll the truck would only flop over a few inches before hitting the embankment on the left side (as you go down it). You do, however, need good rocker protection here, you will be scraping sheetmetal without it. No one even considered going up this obstacle on the way out. This was where, year ago, big Eric rolled what was then his Toyota pickup truck on the way up, and where Bob Blair's then IH Scout opened its tailgate and spewed forth the contents of his truck while bouncing up under full throttle. Ah, the memories.

We turned around and I tried to keep the pace going, as I was concerned about wheeling in the darkness under already bad conditions. Things seemed to be going quite well until I got a call on the radio that we had a problem. Paul, in the Range Rover, who was well back in the group, had broken a front axle CV joint trying to squeeze that heavy truck uphill between those two constricting trees. His set of photos shows the location, this is where you are going uphill on the way out and have to pass very tightly between a pair of trees on a muddy loose gravel and rock hill climb. I walked back to inspect the damage and confirmed that we really did have a problem. Witnesses informed me that his uphill progress had halted with a dramatic bang. I saw that the front end of his truck was a solid axle design driver's side drop with CV joints instead of U joints. The boot on the driver's side (short side, of course) was way out of place and the whole CV assembly looked askew when compared to its apparently undamaged cousin on the passenger side. The front end was, of course, lacking in lock out hubs and Paul had no spare.

I placed a quick cell phone call to our mechanical guru Evan. It was apparent that Paul could drive out in 2wd and back to the parking area slowly and carefully, but should not be driving on the highway in his current condition. After some discussion among LIOR members, it was decided that Trevor would trailer Paul's rig back to Long Island and drive his own well equipped, clean, and apparently water tight Jeep there on the road. That only left getting the heaviest rig on the run uphill out of the trail in 2wd.

Dmitri drew the short straw as a result of having a winch and being in front of Paul. He spent the next couple hours winching Paul up anything and everything. The Range Rover just could not make any forward progress in 2wd with any kind of uphill incline whatsoever. Michael (with the orange Suzuki), Trevor, myself, and a few other ran Dmitri's cable and a snatch block for the rest of the afternoon. Fortunately there were only about four serious uphills we had to bring Paul up, though one of them entailed no small amount of body damage to the Rover.

At about this time my seatbelt decided it had seen enough. It had been balky all day and no amount of either gentle persuasion or brute force could convince it to reel out and secure me in my Jeep. At least we were close to the trailhead, but I did have to wheel a bit with no seat belt.

The weather was killing us, on and off rain with some downpours, but at least it wasn't raining when I finally sighted blacktop and got the somewhat depleted group of trucks together for the airing up process and the trip back to the parking lot. No one even considered trying Monster Rock. We had pushed the envelope enough for one day, and frankly given the conditions were lucky to have broken only what we did. Loading Paul's truck on Trevor's trailer proved interesting. Let's just say that a Range Rover is a very heavy truck.

The trip home didn't get any better. Monsoon like wind and and rain dogged me all the way back, and I saw at least two bad accidents being attended to. One was a car flipped in the median and the second a car crushed right in the middle of I-91, with traffic just squeezing by on either side. I took it real slow for most of the trip. The feel of a one ton pickup and loaded trailer behind it hydroplaning is rather unpleasant.

I hadn't been to MeBell for at least eight years, and it has changed. Some of the obstacles are easier and some are harder. I would not now take a stock truck on MaBell – that bypass for the hill climb right after the mud hole has gotten to be a pretty serious obstacle in and of itself. There's no getting a stock truck up that without a real risk of at least serious body damage, and perhaps worse.