Who: Me and Lance
When: October 15th - 16th
Why: We see rain clouds.... head for the hills!!!!
I heard there was a storm coming in this
weekend and despite gas prices decided it
would be worth going up to the local high
mountains to see what the first winter-ish
storm had in store. For the most part the drive
up was just like any other. Along the way Lance
talked me into going on a jeep trail that is very
notorious for being extremely difficult. We made
it to the Holcomb Jeep Trail late Saturday
evening. The first 1000 feet of the trail was very
rocky. It would be impassable for a stock truck
to navigate through. My mildly build up truck
made it through with just a few nicks and
scrape on the under carriage. Since lance has
several inched more ground clearance he
picked some harder lines that i and had a few
hang us. I spotted him a few times and all was
good.
Sometime around midnight we found a small turn off
road that lead to a dead end. We stopped there and
made camp. We built a small fire and lance cooked up
some beans with his white gas stove.
We woke up to a chilly 36 degrees and a light rain. Not
minutes after waking up and getting our bearing the
rain started coming down harder. We quickly got up
and started to pack up all the camp gear before the rain
really soaked it. Mid way through the packing the hard
rain turned to a  heavy wet snow.

Once packed we drove out not knowing if the snow
would continue and make our drive out much harder
than our drive in. Unfortunately the snow was very
localized. Once we exited the small valley we had
camped in the snow tuned to a light rain. The drive
down went very well. In fact it was a little boring given
that we were earlier hoping for some challenging snow
covered mud and rocks.
The one hight point was where I goofed and took a bad
line through a washed out part of the trail.
Here is the washed out gully I almost rolled my truck into. The picture was
taken just after Lance helped me off the edge. Note how my tracks were low,
close to the roads edge. The fresh mud allowed the front tires to slide right
over the edge. Had I been going faster or the ground was slightly softer i would
have been screwed. And as usual I blame Lance.
After that bit of fun Lance picked a side jeep trail
that intersected the Holcomb trial right about at
the half way point. It was designated as a Most
Difficult trail but we negotiated the trail very easily.
Holcomb Jeep Trail + SoCal's First Winter Like storm
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