Had a great time at the New Years Day run,  the Cliff's was pretty crowded.
 

Our group was myself Andy(Lone Cherokee), Drew, Brad, Alan and Danny (Andy's friend) – Austin where were you? 

After the thaw and all the rain we expected it to be muddy, but it has mostly hard and frozen.  Some areas down by the creek were completely frozen and people were falling just getting out of the Jeeps.  The creek was much deeper since the Nov Newbie run, but causes brakes to freeze up after ;)

There was a section of trail one that Drew named the Disney ride, meaning no hands on the wheel were needed.  I actually took my hands of the wheel for a good stretch and the icy ruts steered the jeep.

The winches came in handy for this run, Jimmy's crack beat 3 out of the 5 and we needed to winch out. It claimed part of my exhaust and a rear backup light. Time to upgrade!!   

We hit some pretty good trails, definitely some areas I have never tried.

Heading back to the lot for the end of the day was the most exciting part of the run, well at least for me. Andy and I skipped the steep decent and climb on trail 5 and decided to take the easier route back on 1 and cross the icy return rout on Lori's hollar.

Andy went first, he headed down slowly then gave it some gas a made up the icy hill!   Now my turn, I went faster down but lost momentum at the bottom and flat out didn't give it enough gas.  I made a little more than 3/4 up, made eye contact with the rest of the group on the other side, lost traction and then started to slide backwards. Not good!!  All I could do was avoid the brakes and keep it on the trail. I told ebeth to hang on as I looked in the mirrors and steer to keep myself  on the trail or at least try. By the time we got towards the bottom it felt like the jeep was doing about 20.   We finally came to a stop with all 4 on the ground and didn't hit any trees, whew!!!

I was able to back up the other side about half way and give it another run, this time lots of gas!   Made it! Everyone seemed glad to see me, could't believe I didn't crash, LOL.   Sadly I don't think any one had any video cause this would have been great footage.

 

I am sure I forgot plenty of other things of note for the day but hopefully the pics capture some of the fun.

Thank to all for coming out for this run and all the help,  looking forward to the Jan 22nd run and I am hoping for snow.

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/um…..directlink

 

Andy – My shorts were actually clean, well mostly..