Weekend in Gilmer

Well, five of us (me, Amy, Andy, Jodi (Penguin) and Ryan (i5sfe) went out to Barnwell for the weekend and had a great time.  The weather was great...a bit hot in the sun during the day but breezy and almost chilly in the evenings.  We practically had the place to ourselves all weekend.  There were a few other rigs on Sat but mostly we saw a few groups of ATV's and a few motorcyclers.
 
There is lots of erosion damage due to all the rains since Megarun.  The Linda Gail campsite is hurting pretty bad with a huge washout next to the fire pit and lots of big ruts in the flat area by the potty.  I'll try to embed some pics after this post.  I was talking to Lawton about it and he said they are looking at doing some major work on the trail near the camp to add culverts on the sides and a bigger concrete culvert to replace the plastic one crossing the trail.  Saw quite a bit of erosion on many of the trails and access roads.  The top of Saturday Night Live is pretty much impassable at the moment...huge washout into the lower end of Horseshoe Gulch.  Three vehicle u-turn was fun on SNL, but we went back down and did the final climb from King of the Hill to get back to the top.
 
Ryan did great with the new locked rear end and less spring in the rear.  Nowhere near the bounce and a lot more of the bite.  Amy did awsome for her second time ever offroad and running a stock 2.5L '01 TJ (ok, not quite stock, she now has 30's...but we will get back to that).  We ran down Solihull Street then she experienced the pucker factor when we climbed Angry Jeep.  Ryan has a great photo of this!
 
We ran around and did a bunch of other trails until...somewhere on one of the access roads or might have been On Any Sunday, Amy sliced a tire...right through the bead for a nice little leak.  The kicker is the tires were about 26 hours old.  Yep, brand spanking new BFG All Terrains.    I'm so glad I got the replacement coverage.
 
After lunch we let Amy's Jeep at camp and went a little bigger.  Why not start with some Twister?  That done, we hit Spider Ravine (the lower climb), half of Sierra Skyview and cut over to Whatever.  We dropped down Humdinger and ran down X-way.  The previously mentioned u-turn put us back down to x-way so we decided to climb the Turnpike.  After that, Ryan decided to show up Andy and I by climbing the big step at the top of Linda Gail (near the pavilion).  The little Toy popped right up once he got the line right.  Not the same story for the TJ Rubicon or the TJ Sport.  I think we took a break at camp after that.
 
We then rolled out again with Amy driving my Jeep and I played navigator.  Linda Gail, cut over to We Show then Desi Way.  Since it was around 6:30, we decided to hit one more big'un while we had light so we made the great decision to try JP Expressway.   The climb out was not fun, Andy backed down and went out the way we came in, Ryan ended up winching the last 1/4 and I nearly ate several trees.  After that, we called it a day.
 
All in all, great weekend!  One cut tire was the extent of carnage...oh, and a cracked radiator on mine.  I think it happened on the drive home but luckily it did not cause issues.  We'll get some pics up soon.

Hopefully here are the pics of the camp
 
 


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Heck yeah! It was a GREAT time @ BMRA this weekend. I have some good pictures & can't wait to see what Ryan has. Amy is really catching on & doing a great job for being so new to off-roading. The weather was pretty nice, although I'm sure it will be pretty steam from here on out until Fall.  Thanks to Squeaky for organizing!!!!! We had a great time!

It ****s I couldn't make this run! Glad to hear that everyone had a good time and that Ryans rig is working better! He should have done that a long time ago! LOL!

I can't get the pics on here - will have to get them into an album tomorrow night.

Had a great time!
Thanks Squeaky for doing some great navigating, I think we hit almost all the  2 & 3 star trails
I think Jodi has a good pic with my back tire about 4ft in the air
Amy gets props for pointing the jeep to the sky !
I got some great pics and videos, will post them up tonight.

ORIGINAL: penguin

I can't get the pics on here - will have to get them into an album tomorrow night.

 
Jodi, I just posted all your photos in the album.

Yes !

Hang time in the Toy!

Aren't we responsible for up keep of that campsite and trail? If so maybe a group of us can go do some work sometime soon.

The washout at the campsite would be easy enough to fix with shovels, but the drain tube would be better to use a tractor.

I am not sure who is the sponsor for Horseshoe Gulch is, I know DFW sponsers Linda Gail but it is still in decent condition.

My pictures have been uploaded - I will see if I can post the videos on youtube or Photobucket.

Here's Amy pointing the jeep at the sky....

ORIGINAL: rooney77

Aren't we responsible for up keep of that campsite and trail? If so maybe a group of us can go do some work sometime soon.

 
From my conversations with Lawton, BMRA will be doing a bunch of work on that area of Linda Gail.  He has someone who is going to start working on it and some other areas when he finishes some job he is currently doing.  Like I said, he told me they plan on culverting both sides and putting a much bigger concrete crossover pipe in place of the plastic one right at the camp.  Looks like it was mostly the wash down the sides of the trail that pooled up because the crossover is full of silt.  This backed up and eroded the entrance to the upper camp area.  The area around the fire pit just keeps shrinking :-( and people have been making fires up higher between all the trees.  Lawton was down several times with the front loader taking dirt from the big hill next to the toilet to spread on the main road near Twister, so the camp may expand a bit in that direction if he keeps digging out.

I just did some quick math...we covered over 65 miles from the time I got there fri until we left sunday morn.  Wow, no wonder we are worn out.