It's Saturday noon, we just ate, replaced the driveshaft in Dustin's Wagoneer. We're nowhere close to halfway. But, no cause for alarm. We're pretty much on pace.

Next up, there's a long section of off camber driving with ledges. Inside the cab, you feel like hitting a bump too hard on the uphill side will put you on your side. Don't worry, it won't. But it feels like it. I walked along this year and it looks tame from outside. There are a few tippy ledges to descend and with that and the off-camber you get tired. And we were getting tired. It was hard on the rigs. Jason's and Dustin's trucks were running real hot. The sun was unrelenting on its slow march to the horizon and we hadn't even gotten close to the really hard part yet. We sent Jason ahead to see if moving a little faster would help the overheating. That's when it all turned.



Scott and I were puttering along and Jason walked up to us. He announced his truck was dead, pointed just about straight downhill off one of the three foot ledges. See, problems don't come one at a time. You can't just have the truck stall, it has to happen on a tough ledge. Murphy at work. Fortunately we were able to get around, tow strap him off then scratch our heads for awhile figuring out what was wrong. Realizing the battery was dead, we worked on a jump start. The sun kept sinking.



We rolled on and after awhile reached the second overlook and stopped to attend to the ailing rigs for a bit while another group of Jeepers went by. Jason's truck was overheating, and one of his electric fans was dead, probably draining the battery. We couldn't cool it down so we went on ahead, only to stall when the battery died. Meanwhile the crew was still working on Dustin's rig to get that axle under control, and his truck was running hot too. Scott came up and we had a mishap while towing Jason to a flatter spot for a jumpstart. The tow strap got caught on one of Jason's giant 38" tires, wrapped around the axle, and ripped a brake line loose. He was able to stop with gears. We waited for the others to catch up and just kind of paused.



We pinched off the brake line, and jump started the truck, and took it even more catiously for the rest of the trail. Next up was Golden Crack. Flint showed us how, then Jason, and he took off to try and control the heating, with me walking. The battery died again and we had to wait for people to catch up and help Jason up a series of gnarly steps.

It was now dusk.

We decided to take it easy and careful but to keep on plugging in the dark. We'd been there and done that in 2004 and didn't think we'd have to again, but sometimes that's how it plays out. It sounds worse than it is, but with headlights and flashlights, spotters to guide drivers, and scouts to find the trail, it's tolerable. Plus we already knew the trail very well. And we had some of the trail on GPS.

One problem I forgot to mention is that Dustin's automatic transmission shift linkage kept disassembling itself all day and on into the night, on top of overheating and the rear axle issue. At one point Flint had to crawl under to manually shift him into drive so he had to power brake through the trail resulting in even more overheating.

There are a lot of obstacles between Golden Crack and the start of Gold Bar Rim. Each of those was a chore to climb with the two limping rigs. Plus we were jumpstarting Jason's rig every so often. As the night wore on it seemed to get harder and we were getting more and more tired.

Later that night we had to take out Dustin's driveshaft or risk blowing another ujoint, so now he was running really hot, unable to drive in reverse, and tackling the trail in front wheel drive. Needless to say we had to do a lot of strapping, too.

For several gruelling hours we hobbled along and finally we made it to Gold Bar Rim. That felt really good. But even though it was around midnight, we were still far from being done and we didn't quite know how much longer before we hit pavement.

All of these trails are freshly marked with painted symbols on the rock from the Easter Jeep Safari, except Gold Bar Rim has a lot of long stretches of dirt where the path vanishes into the vast open -- and pitch black -- desert.

In 2004 we got ourselves lost for what must have been two straight hours. This time I was out scouting along with others, and we did better. It still took awhile and the night wore on as we crossed obstacle after obstacle until we were finally off the trail onto dirt road heading for pavement.

By the time we got off the trail it was around 3 in the morning. Jason's rig had been jump started about a dozen times, and peaked out at 280 degrees, basically ruining the motor. We had to jump start him on a shelf road right near the end. Fortunately for us he stalled just uphill of a wide pullout so it was possible to pull a rig up next to him, or we would've had to tow him the rest of the way.

Meanwhile, Dustin's rig also overheated severely, but he made it off too. And I hiked more that night than in the last five years combined. My knees weren't happy so I was hobbling around like a 90 year old by the end when I gave up and rode the rest of the way.

All told we were on the trail 18 hours.

Next morning, Jason's dad came to trailer his rig home. Dustin's dad arranged car transport as he had blown a water pump. Kenny gained a dent in the tailgate during a snatch operation, and Michel of course broke the main spring I mentioned earlier. We all made it back to our homes ok.

And we all agreed enthusiastically -- we won't be doing that trail again anytime soon and whe we do again, we're camping halfway through.