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Great Western Trail snow day - 11 Dec 09

985 views 6 replies 7 participants last post by  warden 
#1 ·
Decided to run a portion of the Great Western Trail near Williams, AZ on Friday. We'd had a good snow storm Monday, with 20 to 28" of snow in the high country. Lots of search and rescue missions were done to get late season Elk hunters out. The snow has settled quite a bit, and had a heavy crust about 4" thick on it.

We took Perkinsville Rd east from Chino Valley to the GWT, and got on FR 354. It starts at Sand Flat at 4800' elevation, and comes out on CR 73 at 7200'. We almost made it to the top, but the snow got too deep and the tracks we were following were Jeep wide which made it worse than breaking new snow. We stopped at 7000' with about 15" of old crusty snow on the trail.

Other than the full on trail rig, the big Dodge is by far and away the best snow vehicle I've ever had. We did most of the drive in 4 hi, and it went thru stuff the Taco would have struggled with in 4 lo w/ the rear locker on. Even with huge diffs and the low skid plate under the steering stabilizer, the truck just plowed it's way along effortlessly until the Jeep tracks from earlier in the week. The old tracks were frozen and crusty, and there wasn't quite enough room to straddle them without getting into the bar ditch. The photo of the truck is after turning around at the base of the next hill climb. I decided I didn't want to do any winch work yesterday. It was already 3 PM, and I knew I had to climb a 200' hill to get to the next plateau. The hill was north facing, and the snow was getting deeper fast. Perhaps if we'd had another PW along I might have given it a try.

The half day trip was fun for all - Tami and Dusty came along, and I'm not sure who had a better time!
Mark
 

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#5 ·
Glad someone had a nice time. :tup: I'm repairing wind damage from the last 4 days. :mad:
 
#6 ·
I think I'll go on a little drive in the snow tomorrow myself, I've been wanting to experiment with lower tire pressure for the deep stuff. Looks like it was a good time :cool:
 
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