Click on the thumbnails for the full sized picture.

Here are my pictures from Blazer Bash 2008 with Loco Offroad.  We all met up in Flagstaff and drove up to Moab in a group.

The first day we ran Metal Masher.

Here is Widowmaker.  I couldn't quite get my tires up onto the ledge so I didn't make it, but at least I didn't bust a driveshaft like Jason.

We accidentally bypassed the trail on the way in so we ran Widowmaker first then ran Metal Masher backwards.  We stopped on top of a 1200 foot cliff for lunch.

A few of us climbed Rock Chucker.  The two ORD trucks, myself and Juan were the only ones that made it.  Trevor put in a serious effort, but couldn't quite get up with his long wheelbase.  I think he lost about a pound of rubber trying to get up though.

This was Juan playing around in the parking lot.

You can see the cliff where we ate lunch in the background of this picture.

This is just a couple shots of the parking lot from the ORD BBQ Friday evening.

Saturday, we ran Pritchett Canyon.  We had 18 trucks in our group so it was slow going.

Justin managed to catch a picture with all 4 wheels in the air when I was trying to bump up the step.

Rocker Knocker:

Here is a sequence of shots showing how you have to slowly bounce along the ledge and then climb up once you get your tire wedged into the corner.

I'm not sure what this obstacles name was.

Suicide hill earned it's name.  In the last two shots of me going up you can see the drivers front wheel turn sharp left.

This is why, a broken Dana 60 steering knuckle.

With some help from the ORD guys we removed the knuckle welded it back up and reassembled everything (took about 3 hours).

The ORD guys used Willard (the orange crew cab) as an elevator to get everyone up Rock Pile.

Once we made it to the end of the trail I started the long limp back to the asphalt (17 miles of fairly rough terrain).  Unfortunately the weld only lasted a half of a mile.  The ORD guys didn't have the right rods for welding cast iron so even though I removed my hydraulic ram and left the hub unlocked it just couldn't hold up to the stress of steering.  My tie rod wasn't long enough to move down to the stock position, that probably would have helped the knuckle stay together.

The recovery that followed was legendary.  Amber was sent back to camp in another truck to get the Silverado and trailer.  2 rigs stayed behind with me to figure out how to get my rig back to a place that we could load it on a trailer.  We were still 16.5 miles from that point.  We ended up chaining up the front left and rear right axles so the axle wouldn't drag.  Then the steering knuckle, hub assembly and axle shaft were removed (in one large unit).  The tire that we removed was placed over the winch cable which was attached to a strap that was run through a gooseneck hitch in Travis' truck bed.

After a couple miles the winch cable snapped.  The rock ring on the wheel just wore through the cable strand by strand.  The truck was repositioned and a knot was tied in the cable around a shackle and we managed to make it the rest of the way to the road.  The ORD guys came back out with amber (Steve even drove my truck out for Amber) and we backed the truck up onto the trailer still attached to Travis' truck.  The steering knuckle broke at 2:30 PM, it was about 12:30AM by the time we got the truck strapped down on the trailer.

Since I couldn't run any of the trails on Sunday with 3 wheels I ran Long Canyon in the Silverado.  It was a nice scenic trail that ended in a blowout on the way back to camp.

I can't wait until next year.  We had a great time, it was a lot of fun hanging out with the Loco Offroad crew and the ORD guys.  After the recovery Steve and a few of the Loco guys sat around drinking and talking until 2:30.  A couple of the Loco guys and James from ORD actually headed back out to recover Jason's rig that had busted the driveshaft at the beginning of Pritchett, they made it back to camp at 3:30.