IRC vs. RIP (December 2002) by Ian Redden

Andy driving thru the guardians
Beaner shows the way
Andy starting his descent
The double roll aftermath
Andy's beautiful squishy cab
On to the next obstacle
Traversing a rocky ledge
What's that clunking sound?
Luke and Travis catch up
Beaner and Andy scramble up
Travis's turn to flop
Luke gives Travis the strap
Hamburger Hill requires a winch
A winch with no gas, Dave!

Shane Hofer (Beaner) had been trying to get a group of IRC members together to run the RIP (Rest In Pieces) trail for quite a while. Despite being less than 2 km long RIP is relentless with its constant barrage of challenging obstacles throughout its length making it hardest trail that the club runs. The monthly club run on Sunday December 8th was chosen as the date for this run.

Everyone showed up at the meeting place in the morning surprisingly bright eyed and bushy tailed even though the IRC Christmas party was the night before. From there we proceeded to the trailhead where everyone aired down. The vehicles that showed to run the trail were Beaner in his Toyota pickup, Andy James and his son Braden in their Nissan pickup and Dave Podmoroff in his CJ5. There was also a good showing of IRC members along to walk the trail and lend a hand if needed.

Starting up the hill into the trail the first obstacle is an optional line up a steep and slick rock face. Beaner opted to just keep on going and not even try to tackle this one; I think he knew something the others didn't. Andy gave the hill a couple of tries but with a little bit of water and mud at the base of the climb there was no way to get enough traction. After having his front-end start going sideways on both tries he took the go around. Dave gave the hill just one token try and suffered the same fate as Andy so he backed up and also took the go around. From there it is on into the timber where the real trail begins. Everyone proceeded through the guardian, which is two trees spaced just right to allow a narrow vehicle through with a little rubbing of the cab.

Once through the guardian it was on to the obstacle that everyone was anticipating. This obstacle requires you to drive along a rock shelf, which is not much wider than your vehicle, and make a 90-degree turn down an extremely steep slope into the gully below. Sounds fairly straightforward however there are two trees at the bottom of the slope which force you to turn left at the bottom of the slope to get around them. Beaner led the group down here as he has driven this trail many times and is familiar with the line to take. His descent was uneventful as he made the obstacle look easy. Andy was up next and jockeyed his vehicle into position. As he was descending the slope Andy's truck got a little light on the back end and went over into what looked like a slow-motion roll down into the gully. After two complete rolls the truck landed back on all fours and Andy gave a quick wave and started driving away. The body damage to the truck was substantial with the passenger side of the cab taking the brunt of it. The truck had lots of trail character (body damage) before but this one will take a major effort to revive it.

At this point I didn't envy Dave as he was driving the trail for the first time in a vehicle he had only purchased two months ago, and he had just watched Andy destroy his truck in a double roll. True to form though, Dave drove the obstacle without a problem while retaining a huge grin from ear to ear the whole time. Everyone made it up the other side of the gully without incident and proceeded down the trail when Andy figured something was wrong with his truck (OK there was lots wrong with his truck now, but this was mechanical). A quick inspection revealed a broken spring mount on rear passenger spring. With no welder in the group a cable was wrapped around the frame and through the mount. The cable was then cinched down with a come-along hooked to the frame on the opposite side of the truck.

It was about this time that Travis and Luke caught up with the group. They had left their exo-caged Toyotas back at the drop into the gully and wanted to make sure we were on the trail before they went any further. We walked back to their trucks and Beaner spotted them down the slope into the gully. Travis' eyes got really wide and there were a few expletives spoken to himself when he descended the slope only to have Beaner tell him that he would not clear the trees and would have to back up the hill to back and fill his way past them. After playing around with his air-bag suspension a little he managed to do this without falling to the same fate as Andy. Luke was next up and like Travis could not clear the trees. It was obvious Luke would not be able to back up without some help so Beaner and Bill Innes jumped on the passenger side back corner of his truck. With the two of them as counter-weights Luke managed to back up and then drive it down safely clearing the trees.

The next excitement on the trail came a little ways further down at a steep rock face, which has a trench running down the center of it. Beaner and Andy had run up the center of the rock without too much difficulty and Dave had run up the right hand side without a problem (I think this is where he tweaked his windshield frame on a tree though). Next up was Travis who just could not seem to make it up the centerline of the rock. With a few people watching and relaying Beaner's advice "whatever you do don't get sideways and get the back end into those trees there" Travis proceeded to do just that. With every try at the rock his back end went off of the preferred line and further and further to into the trees. Around this time Dave, who was only about 30 feet ahead on the trail was also having problems. It seems that the section of trail he was on was only slightly wider than his jeep with stumps to keep you on the trail on the driver's side and a 2-foot drop on the passenger's side. Dave had managed to hit bedrock with his front diff and when trying to go forward he kept getting closer to going over on the passenger's side.

Everyone that was watching Travis went over to help out Dave as it looked like he was having more trouble and could use the help. That is everyone except for me; I stayed to spot Travis up the rock face. Well, Travis gave it a couple of more tries and still was not making progress so he asked "what about going over to the left some more?" to which I replied "you can try it if you want but there is a very big hole that your back tire will go into". Well Travis tried it and his back tire did go right into the hole and up and over the truck went onto its side. It was a really soft flop and with the exo-cage there was no damage. Apparently no one else had even heard it go over. We hooked a tug strap to Luke who was still in the back of the pack and pulled the truck back on all fours. Travis then took the right hand side of the rock and went right up first try. Having watched this, Luke wisely took the right side as well. In the mean time Dave had gotten out of his predicament without incident.

The next major obstacle on the trail was Hamburger Hill, not to be confused with the Hamburger Hill trail in Duncan. To the best of everyone's knowledge, this hill has never been driven up and is winch only. All of the spectators walked up the hill to get good vantage points of the action but before any trucks were to come up Wayne Foster, who had met up with the group a ways back, had to get his motorbike up the hill. If he had been riding a trials bike this may have been pretty easy (this was a trials trail to start with after all) but since he had an enduro, it was a challenge. Beaner volunteered to ride the bike up for Wayne and did fairly well the first time getting right up to the really steep rock near the top. When the bike stopped forward momentum Beaner yelled for everyone to grab the bike but none of us were ready and he fell back down the hill with the bike landing on top of him. On his next try we were all ready and when the bike came to a stop we grabbed it. With five guys pushing and pulling we managed to get the bike to the top of the hill. Now it was time for the trucks.

Shane and Andy each drove up the hill to where they would need to winch and then winched their ways up with no problems. Now it was Dave's turn. Dave drove up the hill and got into position to winch up with his own winch. When the cable was hooked up Dave proceeded to winch up but I guess he was not content with the speed of his Warn 8274 because he was trying to drive as well to help out the winch. With perhaps a little too much driving and not enough winch tension the CJ started to hop the front end up. After about three quick hops combined with the steep and off camber slope the CJ had had enough and laid over on the passenger side right against a tree in protest. Lucky for Dave the tree laid right across the hood just in front of his new windshield and did very little damage with the exception of a few dings and ripping off his mirror and embedding it the tree. At the top of the hill Beaner lined up his truck to run a winch line through a snatch block and back to the CJ to pull it back over. While jockeying the truck around to get a good spot to pull from Beaner dented in the driver's door on a tree that he did not see. It took about 10 minutes to get a good side pull on Dave to right the CJ and the whole time Dave had to sit/hang in his seat but he still was smiling, although I heard something about his neck getting pretty sore from holding up his head by the end of it. Once on his wheels Dave did manage to winch himself up the hill this time without any more problems. While he was set up for winching Beaner winched Travis and Luke up the hill. It was around this time that Jay Kreiger and a few friends showed up but instead of driving Brutus his Cruiser, Jay was on his ATV. They too had to winch up the hill proving that ATVs can't drive this hill either.

After Hamburger Hill the trail drops down into a tight windy section with a few off camber sections thrown in to keep it interesting. After this section the next major obstacle was a steep and long bedrock climb. The hardest part of the climb was the very bottom, which was the steepest section with many rock knobs sticking up, side angles, gullies and a little dirt thrown in to halt forward momentum. Beaner climbed the hill without any problems, as did Andy (he was doing well on the trail since his roll considering he could not see anything out of the passenger side of his window and his side was pretty bad also). The trucks were a little out of order now and Travis was the next one to try the hill. His first attempts were slow and calculated but unsuccessful. He proceeded to try a little harder (faster) each time on a variety of different lines but no matter what he did his truck did not want to get past the first section of the climb. After letting out more air from his tires and playing with his air suspension height Travis was now attacking the hill and everyone was awaiting the sound of breaking birfields. Finally after a total of about 20 attempts Travis managed to claw his way up. Next up was Dave. Having watched all of the unsuccessful tries by Travis Dave had a good idea of what it would take to climb the hill….speed. I think that Dave did make one unsuccessful attempt himself before backing down into the trees to get a run at the hill. With a very heavy right foot Dave charged at the rock and launched the front tires at least 2 feet off the ground as he nearly catwalked up the hill chasing Bill (who was taking photos) out of his way as he did so. Luke had the advantage of going last and watching everyone else to see what worked and what didn't and made the climb within a few attempts.

The trail was now nearing completion and starting to head downhill back towards the main road. After some more tight winding sections the trail came out of the brush into a clearing. Here you must jockey back and forth to make a hard right hand turn around an arbutus tree. To keep things interesting the turn is off-camber with a rock ledge on the driver's side that runs parallel to the vehicle. While negotiating this turn Beaner got his truck up to the point of near tipping over but no one said anything because most of us have seen him do this on many occasions. The only thing different this time was that his back bumper kept hitting a rock while backing up so he tipped it just a little bit extra and over it went onto the passenger's side. The damage was a wrinkled door and fender and broken door glass. Andy drove out into the clearing and hooked up to Beaner's truck with a tow strap and pulled him back over.

After cleaning up all the glass we were back on the way and into the next obstacle that is only about 20 feet down the trail. This obstacle requires you to drive high on the passenger side while dropping over a steep ledge. Just to keep it interesting there is also a tree on the driver's side that you lean into the further into the obstacle you get. Oh yeah, there is also lots of grabbing of the undercarriage by the rocks. Everyone made it through here with no major problems but I can see where an exo-cage has its advantages.

After a few more drops the trail leans over towards one last tree about 6 feet before it comes out on the road. As if to say you're not done yet, that tree hooked on Dave's bikini top pulling a bar out of it as he drove by before letting him onto the road. We all drove back to the trail head to take photos of the group and all agreed that with 4 out of 5 vehicles going over the trail had lived up to its reputation.

Ian Redden