Clemson Offroad Club Christmas Crawl 2010

[97tjguzzy]

Clemson Offroad Club Christmas Crawl 2010 Harlan, KY
Every year the students at Clemson University struggle through the fall semester, writing papers, studying for exams, wrenching on their rigs and wheeling every chance they get. As the semester draws to an end in December Exams pile up and you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel that is the Christmas Crawl. This adventure was previously held at at Tellico OHV near Murphy, NC but when Tellico Closed the venue was changed to the Black Mountain Offroad Park near Harlan, KY.

This year we rented two houses as we had an estimated 27 people attending the annual trip and we wanted everyone to have a bed to sleep in. Not exactly camping…but It was nice in the weather we ended up having.

the picture uploader isnt working for me today, I'll have to finish adding pictures later

 

[97tjguzzy]

Day 1
The wife and I planned to meet up with a friend and his wife towing his Sammy. About 20 miles from my house his trailer ate a bearing on the car trailer. We made a quick trip to the local trailer shop to grab a new bearing and some spares. We were back on the road in about an hour and on our way to Kentucky.
About 5 hours later we made it to our destination, I dropped the trailer, we unloaded the Sammy and hit the trail to meet up with the others who had already headed to Lower Rock garden. When we arrived at the obstacle we found two vehicles stuck on the trail. Both were having problems with their hydro assist systems and both were on their maiden voyage. We were able to cap off both systems and eliminate the hydro ram from the problem and they were able to continue wheeling the rest of the trip.
I packed up my tools and we all headed back to the house where a few of us cooked up the biggest pot of spaghetti anyone has ever seen. We hung out in the house, sat by the bonfire, and joked about how much snow we would get….little did we know.

 

[97tjguzzy]

Day 2
Sunday we got up to a bit of snow falling and looking out to the mountain tops you could see they had already gotten a good coating. The higher up we went the more snow had fallen.

We headed to Lions den, and by the time we got there we were in 6-8” of snow.

We had planned to meet miller, Austin, and chris here to watch them attempt the lions den trail, but the cold, snow, and wind kept them from attemting that. We rode the trails for a while and decided to head over to whitetail camp to see what the big field looked like for some sledding.

 

[97tjguzzy]

When we got there the snow was still falling and there was about 10” of snow. We proceded to do a bit of sledding, snowboarding, and general shenanigans in the field and on the hills around there.

We eventually headed back to Evarts to stop in for some dinner at the dairy hut. We hung out that night after dinner and worked on some broken jeeps, talked, joked around by the bonfire and listened to the radio broadcasts about the snow that was headed our way.

 

[97tjguzzy]

Day 3
We woke up Monday morning to a little more than a dusting of snow…more like a solid 10" of snow at the house in town which is well below the elevation of the trail system.

We got some breakfast and headed out to see what the mountain looked like and head for the Stadium for some epic sledding.

As soon as we got on the trail we saw that this was more than our average snow. Being a bunch of southern boys we had never wheeled in this much snow and it soon proved to be a limiting factor to some of our wheeling. We finally got to a hill that a few of us just couldn't get it up, so after executing a few ballerina moves and a lot of sliding some of us decided to head back over to the other side of the mountain near the helicopter pad at whitetail.

 

[97tjguzzy]

We stopped for some lunch at the Dairy Hut and decided to wait for the others to return before we headed up to the helicopter pad.

On the way up the snow continued to get deeper and we made our way to the field at whitetail camp again and did a little more sledding and snowboarding behind the jeeps, there was also a snow ramp or two made that I witnessed.

 

[97tjguzzy]

 

[97tjguzzy]

Then we decided to head to the helicopter pad up at the end of the Whitetail trail which turned out to be our best trail ride of the weekend with about 2 feet of snow and some ledges and rocks thrown in for good measure.

We took a group picture and goofed off in the snow for a while with the wind howling.
Then we headed back to the house for some Low Country Boil and good times and story telling of how awesome the snow was. There was talk of sledding off the roof…lets just say it’s a bad idea.

 

[97tjguzzy]

Day 4
Tuesday we went to breakfast and got all of the trucks ready to head home. Temps started to warm up, I think they reached 27 before we left and the sun came out. We stopped at Cracker Barrel on the way home and all in all had a great Christmas Trip and a great way to end the semester and start the holiday break.

back home and ready for a good cleaning...

 

[RU55ELL]

Holy moly that's a lot of snow. Looks like a fun time though.

 

[97tjguzzy]

Great pics. They would make great Christmas cards.
I finally was able to use the trailer today. I am loving it.

I had missed this post till now, Get some pictures of the trailer or the jeep when you take it out next, I want to see what you make of it. Thanks.