Martin Luther King Jr. Snow Run at Ahtanum
Hosted by Eastern Washington Off Road
Report by Clay Graham. Photos by Clay Graham / CegPics.com
On Saturday January 13th, 2007, Eastern Washington Off Road had a Martin Luther King Jr. snow run at the Ahtanum. I found out when I was warming up my XJ, it had a blown head gasket. My family was very disappointed that our Jeep was broken and they could not go. I was the Trail Boss without a rig. I called up Fatboy and he was nice enough to come pick me up.
A few rigs convoyed from Ceg Ranch to the run. We arrived around 10 AM at the Cowiche Mill Road Ahtanum entrance. We started off with 14 rigs but thought we had a few more coming. We waited until 10:30 and then hit the trail.
Fatboy usually is our Tail Gunner but had to be near the front because of me being the Trail Boss. We had to be close enough to point out where the trails was on this run. Since Fatboy is running 31s and kind of a Low Rider, we had Toyotawheelin and another built Toyota take the lead.
We found four more rigs waiting up the trail for us. The missing rigs. Some how they thought the meeting point was at the cut off. That brought the count up to 18 rigs.
The first problem was a tree down in the trail. I left my cutting tools at home in the Molly Mule. We used man power to move the tree so we could pass.
At the turn to start climbing we stopped to wait up for everyone to catch up. As soon as we started up the hill, the 2nd rig back had something wrong with the electrical system. Me moved up the trail for a few minutes. We came to all stop again because Tiny had his hood up.
Toyotawheelin’ drove into the rock pit. He found out that he was driving on ice real quick when the rig fell through. They tried to pull the rig through. That did not work. That had to pull him up the other way.
Remember the Low Rider I was talking about. We got stuck! A little sled pulling by Rollin37s and we are on our way.
We stopped again to wait for Colemancooler because he lost a bead. A few guys helped him and we were on our way again. Moving up the trail some had to have a pull.
At the last switch back we regrouped. The trail on top of Cowiche Ridge was a real challenge and only a few made it very far.
Some of the rigs kept going on the trail and some of us headed back down toward the rock pit. Once everyone was back down, we headed back toward the Cowiche Mill Road parking area. A long the way one rig found he had broke five out of six studs off one wheel. He tried to limp the rig out to the parking lot. Then it died and Fatboy had to charge the battery so he could go again. The rig didn’t make it much farther before the last stud broke off. They had to bring up a trailer to get the rig home.
This was a fun run with a lot of cool people. Thanks for the ride Fatboy!
Here are some photos of the MLK Snow Run at Ahtanum:
