first time at off-road park
06-20-2016, 12:20 PM
#1
JK Freak
Thread Starter
first time at off-road park
Here in Central TX, there are not a lot of places to go off-roading. There isn't really any public land. The overland guys string together trips involving a bunch of unpaved county roads throughout the hill country but even though it's not pavement, it's not really off-road... you can drive 40mph on most of these roads.
For Father's Day my kids took me off-roading at a private park called Hidden Falls Adventure Park. I'm sure many of you in TX are familiar with the place.
I took along my trail jack and a shovel plus a cooler full of drinks and food and loaded up the JKU with myself, my wife and my two daughters along with my son-in-law who served as navigator. We aired down the Sahara-spec Duelers to 20psi and hit the trail taking the advice of the guy who signed us in, which is to stick to level 1-3 trails and avoid level 4 and 5 trails since they would likely be impassible by my stock JKU and my noob skill level.
We did wind up going down and up one level 4 trail and it was actually pretty easy since it didn't involve any obstacles or water holes big enough to challenge my ground clearance. In fact, we basically drove everything we could find that didn't have either obstacles that we couldn't clear without dragging the differentials or water-filled mud holes that looked like they might be deep enough to get us stuck. Since I don't have a winch, I wasn't really in the mood for getting stuck. And with no doors on the Jeep, I didn't really want to dunk my DD's floor under muddy water. My only other real concern was if there was something under the water surface that we couldn't see that might swallow a tire or tear a sidewall. So we basically stayed out of any water or even turned back when we got to water if we couldn't see through it clearly. There were lots of stream crossings that were less than a foot deep that we drove through just fine, they had running water that was crystal clear. But for the standing water holes from recent heavy rains in CenTX, we just turned back.
We drove around in 4L cruising under the park's mandatory 15mph speed limit everywhere and used 1st and 2nd gear and feet-off idling to let the Jeep do its thing to go up and down just about everything. Never had a single traction-related issue. Actually the Jeep had zero issues at all. Didn't ever spin a tire or slip off of something we were on. The no throttle coasting descending in 1st gear worked brilliantly. Once we got the hang of the bumping around, it was amazingly easy and intuitive to just go wherever we wanted.
We wound up being there about 3.5 hours including about a 45 minute break for lunch at the big waterfall where we watched a group of AJP folks drive up the creek to the waterfall and one of the guys in a lifted rubicon JKU with at least 35" tires proceeded to get stuck and had to be pulled out by a recovery strap. Needless to say I declined to follow them into the water where I just watched someone get stuck.
Of course we did this with the top and doors off and now my Jeep is completely covered in dust. The interior is a disaster and I figure I will have to spend a whole lot of quality time with it and a shop vac along with a bottle of simple green in order to get it close to clean. And that was really my only complaint.
So, will I go back? Probably. But not without seat covers or driving the whole thing with the top and doors on. I can't imagine doing this with the doors on though because it was a huge advantage to be able to see the obstacles as the tires rolled over and see exactly how close to the edge we were. And I'll wait until the fall when it's a LOT cooler before we go back. Plus they have a shooting range there, so maybe to make a full day of it, we might bring along the guns and shoot while we're out there.
For Father's Day my kids took me off-roading at a private park called Hidden Falls Adventure Park. I'm sure many of you in TX are familiar with the place.
I took along my trail jack and a shovel plus a cooler full of drinks and food and loaded up the JKU with myself, my wife and my two daughters along with my son-in-law who served as navigator. We aired down the Sahara-spec Duelers to 20psi and hit the trail taking the advice of the guy who signed us in, which is to stick to level 1-3 trails and avoid level 4 and 5 trails since they would likely be impassible by my stock JKU and my noob skill level.
We did wind up going down and up one level 4 trail and it was actually pretty easy since it didn't involve any obstacles or water holes big enough to challenge my ground clearance. In fact, we basically drove everything we could find that didn't have either obstacles that we couldn't clear without dragging the differentials or water-filled mud holes that looked like they might be deep enough to get us stuck. Since I don't have a winch, I wasn't really in the mood for getting stuck. And with no doors on the Jeep, I didn't really want to dunk my DD's floor under muddy water. My only other real concern was if there was something under the water surface that we couldn't see that might swallow a tire or tear a sidewall. So we basically stayed out of any water or even turned back when we got to water if we couldn't see through it clearly. There were lots of stream crossings that were less than a foot deep that we drove through just fine, they had running water that was crystal clear. But for the standing water holes from recent heavy rains in CenTX, we just turned back.
We drove around in 4L cruising under the park's mandatory 15mph speed limit everywhere and used 1st and 2nd gear and feet-off idling to let the Jeep do its thing to go up and down just about everything. Never had a single traction-related issue. Actually the Jeep had zero issues at all. Didn't ever spin a tire or slip off of something we were on. The no throttle coasting descending in 1st gear worked brilliantly. Once we got the hang of the bumping around, it was amazingly easy and intuitive to just go wherever we wanted.
We wound up being there about 3.5 hours including about a 45 minute break for lunch at the big waterfall where we watched a group of AJP folks drive up the creek to the waterfall and one of the guys in a lifted rubicon JKU with at least 35" tires proceeded to get stuck and had to be pulled out by a recovery strap. Needless to say I declined to follow them into the water where I just watched someone get stuck.
Of course we did this with the top and doors off and now my Jeep is completely covered in dust. The interior is a disaster and I figure I will have to spend a whole lot of quality time with it and a shop vac along with a bottle of simple green in order to get it close to clean. And that was really my only complaint.
So, will I go back? Probably. But not without seat covers or driving the whole thing with the top and doors on. I can't imagine doing this with the doors on though because it was a huge advantage to be able to see the obstacles as the tires rolled over and see exactly how close to the edge we were. And I'll wait until the fall when it's a LOT cooler before we go back. Plus they have a shooting range there, so maybe to make a full day of it, we might bring along the guns and shoot while we're out there.
