Be sure to take pictures, I want a trip report!
It turned out there were only two attendees--myself and a really nice guy named Will. I got hooked up with him via another forum. He has just signed up on RME, however, and is using the same screen name here as on the other forum (
iconwill). Since he had never seen it, we decided to run Rattlesnake. Since neither of us had a passenger, we had nobody to take any photos.
Having said that, you should have been there, Steve. You would have been so proud! Will's JK is currently under the knife, so to speak, so he came out in his daily driver: a 2000 Toyota Tundra extended cab pickup. It is entirely showroom stock, right down to the open diffs. It also has beautiful virgin sheetmetal--I don't even think there was a door ding on it--and I
swore to Will that I wouldn't let him dent his pristine body.
This meant I was in the lead. I gotta admit, I was impressed: Will was reluctant to take any bypasses unless I urged him to do so. I would usually overcome an obstacle, then park and hop out to spot him through it. There were a couple spots where I had him crawl along an inch at a time just to make sure the lower body wouldn't get any rock rash. The hairiest part was the exit from the rock garden, but even then he did a fantastic job and we got through without any body damage. The only mark was on his front suspension skid plate, which got a baseball-sized dent from an encounter with a rock.
After the mine tailings, we headed up top to look down the shaft and see the infamous buried Jeep. While doing so, Will managed to cut his shin on one of the pieces of rebar. This gave me a rare opportunity to pull out my first aid kit. This wasn't any sort of life-threatening injury, but I was nevertheless happy to know I'm not lugging around a useless piece of cargo.
After chatting for a while, we decided to head out and run the trail in reverse. This proved to be a little more difficult, apparently, because now all of the little rock ledge climbs are rock ledge descents. On a couple of occasions, Will dropped both front tires off a ledge and the truck landed squarely--and loudly--on the transmission crossmember. It didn't seem to deform in any way, so we shrugged this off as friendly contact (along with the time we drug his tailpipe without bending it). The only other
real damage was when we munched his left rear mud flap (it was the factory rigid plastic type that contours to the wheel flare) but this was so minor (and so easy to repair) that Will didn't even bat an eye.
What about me? On one descent, I managed to land on my gas tank skid plate... but since it is an aftermarket upgraded one, all this did was scrape some paint off of it. Other than that, it was smooth sailing.
I was really glad to make the trip. Will is as friendly a guy as you could ever meet, and I'm glad I got a chance to get to know him. I encouraged him to get active here on RME, and I think he'll fit right in with this group.
