NW wheelin'

[waynehartwig]

This weekend was the annual Pacific Northwest Jeep Meet and Great at Evans Creek ORV park (see, support your locals so your trails don't get shut down! Or you will be left with the extreme wheelin' places like AF canyon).

EDIT: In case not everyone knows where Evans Creek is... It's on the North-West side of Mt Rainier - which is about an hour (lol) south of Seattle. We camped 3 miles out of the Mt Rainier NP. So these pictures are of the glaciers and glacier lakes in the area!

The event was great! Had a lot of people show up - probably 100 rigs and about 300 people. Saturday night they had a free BBQ (tri tip, hot dogs, salads, etc) and then a big raffle. They had sold all 3600+ tickets!! There were prizes from lots of sources: Advance Adapters, Painless, Summit Racing, Eaton, Snap On, Truck Ballz, Warn, Mile Marker, AllJeep, etc...etc...etc.. The grand prize of the raffle was a completely BUILT 8.8 for your rig! Eaton donated a Detroit locker, I donated the Yukon alloy shafts, an auto parts store donated all new brakes, hoses and wheel bearings/seals, MORE donated the appropriate axle bracketry kit, and Auburn Auto Care donated the housing, gears, install kit and the installation into the rig. :greg: The axle went to a guy that already has a 8.8 in his XJ, so he is going to barter with Auburn Auto and get a front locker and gears out of the deal and just keep the Detroit in the rear with my shafts :greg::greg: Can't beat that!!!!!

Crawl was also on site to take some pics (I'll most likely be in that next issue as they always print the carnage shots)

Anyway, here's some pics!

 

[waynehartwig]

We took up two campgrounds and there was barely enough room to drive through them!
I forgot about the Simpson SFI restraints...
And here are some of the lucky winner with the sponsors...
More...

 

[waynehartwig]

 

[waynehartwig]

more...

 

[waynehartwig]

There are a LOT more pictures! I just need to get them all resized and renamed so I can put them on my website in some kind of order....

 

[timpanogos]

post a good picture of your rig!

 

[waynehartwig]

post a good picture of your rig!

Ok...Here's a couple... I don't want to post up the ones that might be in Crawl just yet.... They will show how I messed up that passenger fender

 

[Gravy]

nice pics wayne! the wrangler is looking awesome!

 

[yellowbronco]

Looks like some nice, tight, twisty wheelin'

 

[waynehartwig]

Looks like some nice, tight, twisty wheelin'

I noticed some of the pics I posted were red X's, so I think I fixed them all now. Let me know if there are some not fixed!

Very tight and twisty! The last trail I did, 197 I think it was called (where the XJ is on it's side) was very steep and off camber. Think Hells Revenge type stuff; but you are in the trees on dirt and on very narrow shelf roads with nothing stopping you from rolling thousands of feet but the trees, with a lot of really tight switchbacks. I was very surprised with how wide I am, that I didn't have more problems traversing the area. It seemed like some of the smaller TJ/YJ's had more problems than I did (in the tight switchbacks). But it did seem like 31's and lockers was all that was needed up there. My 39's were way over kill for this type of wheelin'....

 

[drtsqrl]

Nice pics. I used to wheel at Evan's Creek all the time when I lived in Washington (Black Diamond). It was only about 45 minutes from my house.

 

[waynehartwig]

Nice pics. I used to wheel at Evan's Creek all the time when I lived in Washington (Black Diamond). It was only about 45 minutes from my house.

Then you know how nice of a place it is! I really have to recommend it to those that have never been there before. I know it will definately not be my last time! Not so much because of 'good wheelin', but the place is just awesome. The scenery and serenity and the camping...