November 1st and 2nd -- 2nd Annual Twentynine Palms Run

The folks from Rebel 4x4.net are linking up for a 2nd Annual trip to the Old Dale Mining District near 29 Palms/Joshua Tree for more mining trail action! This year's agenda includes:
-Carlyle Mine - this warmup trail to this pristine mining camp includes a flexy washout section that is sure to test the limits of the 2WD guys, while 4WDs will be able to showcase their flexy suspensions. Expect plenty of soft sand to the trailhead.

-Carlyle Mine to Gold Crown Road - Are you up for it? This off-camber trail nearly claimed Desert Spive, while his buddy in a Grand Cherokee blew up his cast rim! Lots of slippery, sliding action! While this trail is risky, we will encourage all stock 2WD vehicles to take the bypass route to Gold Crown.

-The Stairstep - This one requires either ground-clearance, rock rails, or a combination of the two. Imagine walking up 2' steps, tall enough to catch your frontend (if not lifted). This one is a blast, but watch your underside!

-O.K. Mine - This trail contains a cliff-hanger shelf road, and an off-camber canyon trail - with plenty of mining history to boot!

-Brooklyn Mine Trail - Your frontend will need to flex up this hillclimb, while down in the canyon, we'll travel a freshly damaged trail (thanks to Mother Nature).

-Black Eagle Mine Trail - We'll travel to the end of the trail, and inspect two newly damaged canyon sections. There's a particular v-notch that I want to challenge the locked guys on (Josh S. ).

-Golden Egg Mine Trail - A great 4Lo shelf road with a fresh mine located at the bottom of the hill. Hike to the end of the mine, and see what mining used to be like in the 1980s!

-The Bowl - Josh S. and I hosted our Rebel 4x4 competition mud drags here a few months ago. Plenty of fun for everyone!

-Cottonwood Trail - This 23 mile trail will provide a nice end to our adventures, and from here we say, "Hasta La Vista, Baby!"

Our meeting place will be Saturday, November 1st at 7 a.m. in the parking lot of 4 Wheel Parts, Riverside, CA. CB channel 33. Last chance gas will be in 29 Palms on corner of Hwy 62 and Adobe Road at the Circle K/AutoZone/Mc Donalds complex. Meet us there at 9:15 a.m. if you're coming from the desert communities.

See You There!!

Sounds like a good time! Wish I was still living in AZ!!!

This run is going to be great. Lots of trails (some new, some old), and plenty of rigs (10) are signed up with still room for both Saturday and Sunday. [20 vehicles is our limit] BTW- We will have bypasses for the 2WD guys, so everyone is welcome.
-Ken

Myself and a buddy in his Dodge should be headed out tomorrow, while the rest of the group is heading out on Saturday. We will be camping at Golden Egg mine on friday night, so meet us there!

Originally posted by Josh S.
We will be camping at Golden Egg mine on friday night, so meet us there!

Click to expand...

Josh,
You guys have guts. The last time we camped at Golden Egg, you got scared - now, being that its Halloween, it'll be even scarier!
-Ken

One more thing,
Our group will be traveling via the I-10 into the Pinto Basin to catch up with Josh S. and his friend. We will not be traveling through Hwy 62. Our first trail will be Black Eagle Mine which is closer to I-10 than Hwy 62.
-Ken

my **** is phucked. we can't get the damn air out of the cluch system and dont know what the ***** to do so i dunno if we'll be there. probly not. ill give an update on any developments. oh and btw, did i mention im phucking pissed as hell right now?!?!

dang josh that sux man...after all that waiting and now you can't get air out....too bad brotha, keep us updated...lates

Josh,
Sorry to hear the news on your Ex. THUNDERHORSE will be traveling the rough trail all day, so, maybe you can ride with him?? I just got the Cobra 25LTD CB installed today, so, I'm ready to 'wheel!!! I talked to your friend Don, and he says, you're almost done with the clutch. Cool! I can't even wait! Drive safely in that rain, don't forget to top off your gas tanks in Indio, and eat your Wheaties!!
-Ken

Well, we finally made it out there at about 215am, and we did have a blast! Happy to report the clutch worked out great, and it even helped me out pull out a Dodge Ram out of a bigass hole!

We ended up camping on the side of the road on Friday night/morning, and staying up allllllll night long. Man that was fun. Ken, Thunderhorse, and another couple in a Rubicon showed up in the morning. We packed up camp after a nice breakfast of corn beef and hash and sausage, then headed up the trail. We journeyed up to Brooklyn Mine, with everybody getting some nice flex on the way up. After doing the loop around the mine, we crawled back down the wash in 4 low and hit up some nice rock crawlage. When stopping for a photo-op, we found a nice little bypass through some tough boulders. Myself, the other Rubicon and the Ram headed through it, catching some real nice articulation and workage-outage of our power steering pumps. I was the first one to undertake the obstacle on the little bypasses, and basically ended up showing everybody what line NOT to take. With some nice little scrapage down the radius arms, in addition to the frame AND my nice beatiful 9-11 bolts on the radius arms, I dragged my pile through, with everybody going through uneventfully in the rear. The rubicon pulled right through, backing up and repositioning to line up correctly. Mitch in his Ram pulled right on through, taking great advantage of his 10" of lift and 35" tires( soon to be 38's). After some nice wheeling and breaks along the trail, we headed towards the Stairsteps trail. On the way to the trail, I ran over some sort of sagebrush that must have jumped out at me, and got a flat on the driver front tire. After changing it out, we got back on the trail, running on my spare. Getting real close to the trail, we took a wrong turn and our trail leader Ken decided to bring it back around and get to the correct trail. Me, being too cool to turn back around, headed across the canyon, in wearch of a shorter route. Within seconds, me and TDG(copilot/navigator) heard a huge whoosh of air as the air streamed out of my drivers front tire. We got it on flat ground, and realized I had run over another bush, seeing a 1" diameter stick protruding out of my tire..."Dang," we thought...thats all the tires we have!!! Fortunately, I had a Safety Seal Kit in the back of the rig, making quick time of plugging up the tire. Thunderhorse graciously loaned me his Quick(slow) Air compressor, and the thing was pumped back up to 20psi in no time. At this time we deciced to call it quits, and head up to Golden Egg Mine where we camped for the night. Thunderhorse split with Kens hunny riding shotty, as well as the other Rubicon that was with us.

We camped out that night at the mine, having a real nice fire and dinner of Chef Boyardee Ravioli, Pizza(for Ken), Cup of Noodles, and mainly...beer. But anyways, we'll just say we had ourselves a good time. The majority of the group crashed out before 8pm(due to the previous nights party session), with the hardcore partiers haning around till 1230ish In the morning, most of us got up around 830 to start cookin up another great corn beef n hash/ sausage breakfast, while the hardcore partiers from the night before stayed snuggled up till around 10am

Getting a late start, we broke camp at around 1045. The weather was very nice, never getting higher than 70 degrees all day. Nice cloudcover for us all day, with no rain. Sundays trail lineup started heading back towards the stairsteps. With our convoy getting close, Ken noticed a sign that said, "trespassers will be shot." We decided that we didn't want any Rebel 4x4 members to get shot just yet, so we hitched it back around. Hitting up the Partly Bowl on the way to our next trail, we had a lot of fun. However, as we all know, noone goes to the bowl without someone having an incident. This time, it was Mitch in his Ram. A large crevasse just happened to jump out at him and swallow his tire whole. With the rear end ****ed high into the air, his entire undercarriage was mostly high centered, with some extreme off-camberage. It was a sight to see, but after some diggage and rock stackage we managed to pull him out safely, with the truck seemingly still intact. Good times... .

After the Bowl, we headed up towards Carlysle Mine/ OK Mine. At the fork, we decided to take OK Mine instead of Carlysle, because we needed to get back and I really didn't have any more spare tires. This was a nice scenic trail, and we all had a lot of fun. A few very nice mineshafts were seen along the way, and some nice wreckage was explored along the trail too. Motorhomes, watertruck, old generators and mine house building thingys, etc. Reaching the bottom of the trail, we prerunned back all the way to the pavement, unlocked the hubs, and hit the road to come back home. Everybody made it home safely, and only one guy ended up getting hit in the head with a lugnut wrench due to strangling me Good trip!!!