There were only three vehicles, Ginger and myself in the Wrangler, our guest Ron Schonscheck in his new full-size Ram pickup, and Corey and Jason, in Dana’s Wrangler. Dana, in case you were worried, you should know that the boys took excellent care of your Jeep...

A small group but a beautiful day, we started out messing around in the Mojave River. There wasn’t any water running this day, but it was still fun.

We worked our way up the mountains and through the canyons to Horse Springs campground for lunch. While the Devil’s fire several years ago has devastated much of the area, it’s good to see that there is a lot of new greenery coming in.

After lunch we headed up the White Mountain trail. While the Dodge suffered a little "desert pinstriping", all went pretty well.

When we got to Cal-3-Wheel Hill, we stopped to watch a mini-truck (well, most of a mini-truck anyway) that was sliding off the side of the hill about half way up. A Jeep in their group, Mr. Lead-Foot Big-Motor, attached a yank strap to the stranded truck and floored it in reverse, pulling the truck down the hill at great speed (towards him!). It was his good luck that the door of the mini-truck fell open, caught a tree and spun the truck sideways on the hill, stopping it from coming down. As all this was happening, another man came running down the hill from the top, holding on for dear life to the end of another strap attached to the front of the truck! It’s a good thing he was there to stabilize things. Duh.

Everyone in the group made short work of Suicide Hill, though Corey and Jason were temporarily lost in a cloud of dust as they went up.

Ginger and I took on Frustration while the others took the not-so-easy go-around.

On our way down the mountain, we met two very nice, but lost, fellows in a CJ, who decided to tag along. We decided to take a run down 3N34 to Lake Arrowhead.

While Ron wasn’t real pleased that we had taken him down this diamond trail in his new truck (who could blame him), I must say that that Dodge is an excellent off-road machine. Even stock, those things have some great articulation and it had no problem with the trail!

When we got to T-6 we were in for another surprise. A fellow in a full-size Ford (well, most of a full-size Ford, since he’d hacked off the roof and stuff) had considerately parked in the road right at the stream’s edge in order to pack his truck. After a while, we asked him to move, so he takes off across the stream, then, much to our surprise, throws it into reverse and backs up the stream! Well, as some of you know, the stream is pushing nine feet deep out in the middle. He ended up almost capsized with the bed of the truck (which contained two duct-taped car seats, each with a child in) out of the water and the hood sunk. None of us could believe the truck was still running, but it was. Even worse, none of us would have believed what was to follow, either.

For the next two hours (yes, TWO HOURS) we watched this group attempt to extricate the stranded Ford. They pulled, they tugged. They drove their Jeeps around and bumped and scraped the rocks and each other (!). They darn near succeeded in pulling the Ford over in the water, which probably would have drowned those poor kids, who were still stuck in the truck bed despite many people pleading with the parents to remove them. Had any of us had ham radios or a good cell signal we probably would have called the Forest Service, as the situation grew more grim with each passing moment.

Finally, the Ford was free and we passed through the stream and went on our (now very late) way into town. We aired up and headed for home.

Thanks to Corey and Jason, who made this a very memorable trip, and a special thanks to Ron, who hung in there through the worst of it with us. All in all, we had a great time and another successful day of wheeling in the mountains.