Fordyce Creek Trail

July 14, 2006

Written by Keane

My college roommate Eric was in town last week. A while back he made a comment about Fordyce being a “two wheel drive” trail the last time he drove it (10+ years ago). With that in mind we decided a last minute trip was in order. I twisted Rob and Sue's arm so he would act as a tour guide.

The trip was going well until we got to “Eric’s Spot” (the tough spot just ahead of winch hill one) and caught up with a group that was having some trouble. They had an FJ40 with a broken birfield. He was hung up and not making any forward progress. Eric offered to pull him back and broke a front axle u-joint in the process.

Rob had a spare for a newer Jeep, but we weren’t convinced it would work for Eric’s CJ5. We decided to call for reinforcements. We called John and with some arm twisting, convinced him to run up and meet us with the U-Joints.

Rob, Eric, and I started to fix the U-Joint. When we got it all pulled apart and finally managed to get the old joint out, we realized that Rob’s spare would work, we called John, but he was already on the trail so he decided to join us. In the process of fixing the U-Joint Eric hit his finger with a 4 pound sledge hammer and messed it up pretty good. A mere mortal would cry but Eric just got nauseous and winched in pain as we disinfected it and taped it up. In the real world it would probably have required a few stitches. Rob and I attempted to fix our rock lights while Eric put everything back together. We decided to wait for John at the bottom of winch hill 1.

John caught up around 6:00 and it was “game on.” Even though we were late we decided that the bypasses were not an option. The rest of the trail was reasonably uneventful. We were airing up by 10:00. Rob, Sue, and John made a bee line for home, but Eric and I decided to stop in Truckee since he needed gas and I needed food. Fortunately we were able to survive on a package of gas station donuts and a Pepsi for the ride home.

Eric had some serious steering issues on the way home and the drive out of Truckee was really slow as he tried to stay in his lane. The grooves in the pavement from the trucks combined with his bias ply tires was not a good combination. Once we hit the new pavement we were good to go. I ended up making it home around 2:30.

Both of us agreed that Fordyce is NOT A TWO WHEEL DRIVE TRAIL! Here’s a couple of pics. The thumb picture is probably PG-13 for gore. I’ll work on getting some video hosted. It shows just how helpful a little extra wheel base can be on winch hill 1.

Thanks to Rob and Sue for the trail guide services and thanks to John for bringing the spare parts!