Rockin’ XJ Jamboree
Time to go play in Johnson Valley again…
This year I had a couple of passengers with me for the drive out to Moab, Clint and Randy both wanted to see the event but were too far away to drive so they flew to LAX and rode with me. Since Clint came in a couple of hours before Randy did I put him to work replacing the U-Bolts on my rear axle while I put the Custom 4×4 rear bumper on, after that we went and picked up Randy then went straight back to the house to continue packing. We finally made it out of there around 3am and hit the road.
We arrived in the JV area around sunrise, I pulled off the road to use the restroom and realized I had the perfect Kodak moment for my new build.
We pulled into camp and went to sleep in the Jeep, after about twenty minutes of sleep we woke up because there was activity in the camp, another day was brewing. Randy and Clint hitched rides with people out on the trails while I stayed behind to take care of a few things on the Jeep, I had to install a borrowed rear driveshaft (I drove to JV in front wheel drive) and install the longer brake lines I had picked up on Thursday. After I was done with that I took a few photos of the bumper and then cruised around a bit, I never did get around to taking that nap I planned on..
On Saturday Randy and I went on the easy scenic run for two reasons. One there were an awful lot of people on the moderate run (I couldn’t do any hard runs because of my Spicer axle shafts and weak OEM steering) and the scenic run was terminating where Clawhammer and Wrecking Ball meet, and there is nothing more fun that heckling people as they come up the final waterfall on Wrecking Ball! Along the scenic run we did a high speed run along Emerson Dry Lake, although with my tired old engine I wasn’t exactly at the front of the pack…
After that we went to the end of Claw, ate lunch, and happened to met up with Tim Bentley just coming up Claw. Randy and I hitched a ride with him to the waterfall on Wrecking Ball (it’s a bit of a hike) and there the chaos began! As usual it was a lot of fun and a few people had a hard time. Santa had a bit of trouble with the waterfall and almost ended up going over…
The start of the show (aside from the JV experts like Dave Taylor) was Joe in his four cylinder stretched TJ which just goes to show even a silly little cheerleader Jeep can be a competent off road vehicle if it has an XJ-like wheelbase.
After everybody got up I hitched a ride with Bryan C. down to my Jeep and we arrived in camp well before sundown, that is quite a big deal when a large-ish group is running Wrecking Ball! In the evening we had our dinner and raffle then we all huddled up around campfires and talked some shit.
As is the JV norm Sunday was a lazy day. Mid-morning people got around to heading on down to Backdoor to play and we went along to watch. Both Avery and Matt were able to make it up much to their delight. As usual Richard had to be an asshole and show off how easily he could go anywhere with his secret weapon.
Avery’s method was Brute Force.
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Dude, the trail doesn’t go that way!
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Matt gets it.
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Richard showing off.
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As usual it was a fun event and I will go there next year.
For more photos click here.
Sequoia
October 24th, 2007 at 4.01 pm
Nice writeup Geoff. I had a lot of fun that trip, especially since I didn’t have my Jeep with me.
…but you forgot to mention making me wait at the airport for an hour