Southern 4WD Association Q1-98 Meeting

Text and Photos by Sam Houston

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The first quarter meeting of the Southern 4WD Association was scheduled for the weekend of March 6-8, 1998. This meeting was based out of the Comfort Inn at Caryville, Tennessee with the trails less than 5 minutes away on the 45,000 acre Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area.

At this quarterly meeting, there were rides on both Saturday and Sunday with a business meeting held Saturday night. The meeting (and rides) were hosted by the Atomic City 4 Wheelers.

Royal Blue has land on both sides of I-75, with what seems to be a dichotomy of terrain and road conditions defined by which side of I-75 you are on. Eric Herrin and Mike McKenna's report primarily covers the area east of I-75 which has trails that are mostly dirt/mud based. I was on a different ride that started west of I-75 on a long rocky hill climb up into a strip mined area. On top, we found sandy soil, deep water "ponds", and a couple of interesting hill climbs. We did find some mud too. For the afternoon session, we ran some of the same trails that Eric and Mike had run.

The Morning Ride - March 7, 1998

Steve Turek of the Renegade 4WD Club of Atlanta working his way up the last rocky section on the first long hill climb. This picture does not do justice to the steepness or the slipper surfaces of the rain wetted rocks.

Once we made it into the strip mining area, we played in deep water (sorry no pics of that) and several sand hills.

Greg Fox of the Middle Tennessee Trail Runners (MTTR) makes a run on one of the steep, loose sand hills.

Robert Parish, also of the MTTR club on the same sand hill. That's a tall Jeep he's in. Those are 36 inch Buckshots he's running.

After playing on the sand hills, we moved on to a tough spot that few vehicles made it up. We came around a bend to confront a sheer wall of about 50 feet with a small trail up the left side. Making it to the top entailed a short steep climb up a sandy hill which soon became severely rutted and is what kept most of us from even getting to the fun stuff … the top.  The line here was to get near the edge of the drop-off on the right, but that put you severely off camber at the edge of a deep and crumbling rut. The rut here is in the foreground.

 David Borum topping the cresting the fun part. You can see the drop off in the background … those guys are standing at the edge. You can also see why this was a little challenging … check the articulation.

After lunch, we crossed to the east side of I-75 and started seeing real mud. We got to a section that was very off-camber and slippery. Doug Tremblay of MTTR was trying to keep his TJ off the bank on the left when he slid into it hard enough to unseat the bead on his bias ply Buckshot Mudder on the driver's side front. Here, we've winched his jeep away from the bank and are getting ready to use the High Lift. Doug's wheel left a perfect imprint in the bank where he hit.

The rear view of reseating the bead on Doug's Jeep. Yes, the rear quarter panel is against the bank. Yes the bank is really that tall. The rut is deep enough that when the Jeep in front of me dropped into it, the uphill tires came off the ground! Luckily, Doug experienced no damage other than a bent license plate.

If you run full width axles and 38s, you can avoid the situation that us lowly TJ pilots run into.

Then we made it to the ledges that Eric Herrin described as looking like some that are in Moab, just covered with slippery mud. This was the second Jeep from our group to get over this obstacle. Notice the inflation wrinkles in the left rear tire.

Yes, the ledge is tall, and yes, this driver is on the short side!

This ledge was mean. It tended to throw you sideways making rollover a distinct possibility as this driver from the Middle Tennessee Christian Jeep Club almost found out.

Here are a couple of two picture series showing successful assaults on the ledges. First up is Steve Turek in his well equipped XJ.

Robert Parish makes a clean run up in his tall CJ.

But, if your driving a built rig like David Borum's, you can take the challenging route up the tall side of the steps. David did make a nice run up the steps after posing for this picture.

Later on the trail, we came to a section that I do not have pictures from. The trail dropped into some DEEP ruts … deep enough that I saw one of the YJs on the ride drop the passenger side tires into the rut (the only way up the hill) and the top of his top (yes you read that right) was rubbing against the bank. I took the long bypass. The folks who continued out this way suffered minor damage: two broken CB antennas, two spare tire carrier stop brackets on YJs removed by the mud banks. The best picture will have to be painted in words since the photo did not come out. A red CJ5 in our group had about 4-5 inches of mud piled on the windshield frame from the cowl to the top on the passenger side from driving up the ruts. His windshield frame had been buried in the bank for about 150 feet as he drove up the ruts.

Another weekend of good clean dirty FUN!

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