Trail - Elephant Hill
| The
goal for today is to be a "shakedown run". A close to civilization,
short trail to ensure each person and their jeep performs smoothly. This trail is high on my list for enjoyment. It has a nice mix of scenery and technical - curious to easy. |
| All of the vehicles for this trail event are
leaf sprung. I made up a trail-triage leaf spring repair kit and gave
it to the group leader (James). I have seen one in use - the plates are
sandwiched across a broken leaf spring (short bolts or long bolts -
depending upon where the break happens) with the bolts heavily
tightened to hold the spring together. Ratchet straps often added to
pull the leafs together. Just having it ensure we would not need it. It's a compact item to carry. |
| The plates are old shackle plates from my rear
leaf springs when I changed to longer plates. |
| We pulled off of UT-191 and are heading west
towards Canyonlands, Needles district. Open range area. |
| Down in the trees. Newspaper rock is nearby. |
| Ranchland - cattle grazing |
| On the trail Following Doug in the red jeep |
| Looking down at the trailhead |
| Jen and James |
| Doug |
| The squeeze The early CJ-5's have AMPLE space on each side. I'm wider though have no issue rolling through w/o scraping. |
| Red Jeep's from Colorado |
| White Jeep's from Maryland |
| Blue Jeep's from Wisconsin |
| Tourquoise Jeep's from Montana (ex Colorado) |
| Smooth driving - always a treat. |
| We're
at the parking lot for "The Joint" trail. The group is taking a walk to
the joint area - walking a slot between huge rocks. I made the walk on
my last visit and decided to not walk it today. Parked ahead of my jeep is a black tour guide vehicle. The tour guide, it seems, had two sets of customers. A family of three and an elderly gentleman. It seems the group headed out to the joint area but the elderly gent decided to not do the walk - but they had already headed out - but were close to the parking lot. It seems the elderly gent did not return to the parking lot and became lost. The tour guide was distressed to locate his missing customer. Our group did see the elderly gent on the trail - the last people to see him. The tour guide was in contact with his office and park officials to locate the person and a formal search started later in the day. When we left the trail for the day a search person asked me a few questions (last seen where and when) and then headed out on the walking trail to search. In contact with a client a couple days later the client did some searching and found a report of the incident saying the guy was 81 yrs old, has alzheimers, and was found. No bad news reported. |
| Panorama click for a larger size |
|
Confluence overlook Green river on the left with Colorado river on the right Panorama (cell phone created) click for a larger size |
| Panorama (digital camera created) click for a larger size |
