- Location
- Dayton, OH
Before we even got to the trail, we got to see a couple decent rigs. Along with this mog there were another half dozen, but this was the only pic that I got:
We had a group of 4 on Saturday with myself, Kelly, one of my buddies that I play ultimate with (2000 Cherokee), and his dad (stock 2001 Durango). His dad came down from Wisconsin for the weekend, so he wanted to see what the Durango could do and I'd say we 1) put it to the test, and 2) it passed. Suspension wise it's comparable to a stock X, maybe slightly lower, but the 4.7L V8 made up for it.
We got to the end of 22 and had to turn around (We weren't comfortable with the height and wheel travel of the Durango to put it on the rocks)
A bunch of these will just be me taking them from behind as I was brining up the rear. We we're keeping a pretty good pace, but managed to get a peak of the beaver trail
There was a little bit of mud we had to go thru, and I think I can say Kelly was slightly less than thrilled about having to run thru it
Going down 16, Ollie got hung up on his front diff pretty well and left a present on one of the rocks
Another one in the light of Kelly's X
I was getting ansy to get some photos of the X so I posed a little bit before heading down a portion of 16
After getting to the bottom of 16 and starting to head back up the other side, the thunder rolled in and the other side of 16 was sloppy enough we weren't going to make it up. So we turned around again and booked it the other way back out to the gravel to find which way needed to go next
18 is an ATV only trail and was longer than 16, but we'd have to go back up it (and our confidence level at this point wasn't terribly high). I went first in case we needed to winch either the durango or heep (both have pretty bald street tires) and with some spotting got thru and back down to take some pics of everyone else coming up. The durango was next, cuz if we we're gonna have any problems, it would be here. Or so we thought
We had a group of 4 on Saturday with myself, Kelly, one of my buddies that I play ultimate with (2000 Cherokee), and his dad (stock 2001 Durango). His dad came down from Wisconsin for the weekend, so he wanted to see what the Durango could do and I'd say we 1) put it to the test, and 2) it passed. Suspension wise it's comparable to a stock X, maybe slightly lower, but the 4.7L V8 made up for it.
We got to the end of 22 and had to turn around (We weren't comfortable with the height and wheel travel of the Durango to put it on the rocks)
A bunch of these will just be me taking them from behind as I was brining up the rear. We we're keeping a pretty good pace, but managed to get a peak of the beaver trail
There was a little bit of mud we had to go thru, and I think I can say Kelly was slightly less than thrilled about having to run thru it
Going down 16, Ollie got hung up on his front diff pretty well and left a present on one of the rocks
Another one in the light of Kelly's X
I was getting ansy to get some photos of the X so I posed a little bit before heading down a portion of 16
After getting to the bottom of 16 and starting to head back up the other side, the thunder rolled in and the other side of 16 was sloppy enough we weren't going to make it up. So we turned around again and booked it the other way back out to the gravel to find which way needed to go next
18 is an ATV only trail and was longer than 16, but we'd have to go back up it (and our confidence level at this point wasn't terribly high). I went first in case we needed to winch either the durango or heep (both have pretty bald street tires) and with some spotting got thru and back down to take some pics of everyone else coming up. The durango was next, cuz if we we're gonna have any problems, it would be here. Or so we thought
I must admit that I had concerns about a Durango with street tires wheeling with us. Those concerns grew when I realized it had no recovery points. It got downright troublesome when we came to the 2 foot vertical step on the steep ascent on 16 out of Suck Mud Creek that none of the trucks were getting over especially the stock Durango. It turned into a flat out "burn the Durango in place" panic once we made it back to G14 to try and call it a day and go back on access roads when I realized the only way out was to go back up 16 to G1 and knew that the 2 x's and the Jeep were going to struggle to get up the steps on the hill past the 16/18 merge. Well screw it we gotta try it and Don and the Durango got denied once but then with the proper amount of skinny pedal just did a hard bump and run and scooted right up.