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We set off to Run Little John Bull & The real John Bull on 6-7-24 with the following in attendance
1. Rob Felix 808 22 4-door
2. Terry Miller ‘22 4 door
3. Tom B 21+ 2 door
4. Kin Lam malnik77 23 4 door Kinny Vivian & 2 young boys
5. Marcelino 13 21+ 2-door Lino as he would later be called
6. Rob RollemUp 21+ 4-door
7. Boss Broncos 21+ 2 door Mark & Sally Sarah
We met up at the wide section on Van Dusen at 8:30 Where we ran into our friends Ralph & Patrice in their well built classic on 37’s. They made their way out ahead of us to see the show at the Gatekeeper. Tt was great to see them again this year.
The others staggered in. We aired down & had a quick drivers meeting, sync’d radios at pulled out at 9 to start our adventure at Little John Bull. Before starting off, we discovered that Kenny had some kind of rear diff guard on his mostly stock Base Sasquatch base the stole 3”s of ground clearance. The diff is the hardest part on the whole truck and does not benefit from something like this for normal trail use & even rock crawling & would serve as a challenge all day.
We made our way up Little John Bull to the spot where Dave’s classic threw it’s fan into the radiator last year and this was where we were to find Kenny anchored in after being told to take the by-pass. This place must be jinxed
. Out came the Hi-lift with wheel lift attachment and slag factory foot. This combination can do amazing things like jack safely at an angle to the surprise of many concerned doubters. We stacked countless rocks and let the wheel down and was able to get Kinny free.
We continued on our way stacking rocks here & there. Unfortunately, this adventure would be a trail tech class all day long
.
We made it safely through little John Bull & stopped at the Gatekeeper where we would meet up with Ralph & Patrice again & a solo red 6Gen.
There was a Jeep Rubicon couple that were high centered on Turtle Rock & with their approach was about to lead to exciting times if they did not apply the CYAD method, which is Calm your @$$ down!!! This was one rude chick that did not receive helpful ideas without barking at a number of people, going on about how she ran the Rubicon & blah blah blah. Said this was the first time she ever had to use the winch blah, blah, blah. Lose the attitude, no one cares, just get out of the way. I feel sorry for that dude putting up with that nonsense. The choices we make sometimes.
So while they were winching she was spinning the tires up pretty good. I said easy on the throttle for which she barked back “I'M BARELY TOUCHING IT!!! ” I was just waiting for one of those tires to land and their fun would be over pretty quick.
Once freed from Turtle Rock, the guy was having her take an insane off-camber line unnecessarily that was close to putting it on it’s lid for which Ralph tried to help them again and was barked at.
Once they were out of the way, Ralph cruised through the gate keeper but did get a little sideways in the turn after Turtle Rock.
I was next, I was doing good until turtle rock got me as I slid off the slippery dust covered rock into a high centered situation. This dust makes the rocks like ice. The crew packed a few rocks, but we ended up just pulling cable. It didn’t take much and I was on my way climbing up the hill on the off caber left side only to be thwarted by the dusty slippery rocks again that kept throwing me into the passenger wall. I was getting ready to pull more cable whenSally Sarah threw a rock for me and I was back on my way.
The crew started building a road and Tom was next through the gap and up the hill. Next was Lino. Then the real challenge came when Kenny went for it & surprise the diff got anchored again. The front and rear were both floating. We tried to do a redirect pull with Rob’s winch but the rear differential was too hung up. We had Mark bring his truck with a winch up to drag Kinny back and proceeded to build a road. Then we went back to our redirect pull class and dragged Kinny up and over. He ended up running over RollemUp Rob’s winch line, which didn’t make Rob too happy. Maybe conniption would be a better word for it
. Fortunately, there was no harm done. We moved the trucks up the trail to make room for the others & waited. Then waited some more & even waited some more.
Apparently, RollemUp Rob was having a rough time of it as we waited pushing 1 ½+hrs. and the final 3 still hadn’t made it up & we were holding up a large group of classics & a real jerk in Yellow Gladiator .
Later I would here some unpleasant stories about what was happening down the hill from the folks that were down there . I had already gone up & down the hill a number of times and tweaked my knee as I about fell on my face 
when we were rigging Marks truck up, so I didn’t have any desire to hike down the hill again. That fine dust makes the rocks & trail slippery as ice just walking it.
I kept calling on the radio every so often only to hear we’re working on it.
Ralph had returned back down the trail stating that the other single 6G had grenade'd his front diff & sent axle parts flying to heck & gone
. Ralph and his wife said that the trail was really rough this year and much worse than what we’ve been through earlier in the day.
Taking into account Ralph’s thoughts, who is not a bypass Bob kind of guy by any means, if not the polar opposite and his wife saying how bad the trail had gotten, I decided it was best for us to turn back, as we were at an experience and equipment deficit and we had given quite the trail craft class all day long.
Personally, I was pretty gassed at this point and we had a long way to go as we were basically at the start of the real John Bull & it was getting late in the day. I had no intentions of missing the Potluck dinner that night but really it would have made a long day into a long night had we kept going & it would have been a whole lot of no fun keeping after it. I felt it best to get everybody back safe and unbroken.
Lino parted ways with us and continued on with the classics. We didn’t see him later at the pot luck, so not sure how that played out. If we hadn’t turned around when we had, we would still likely be out there jacking and stacking and pulling cable for miles on end.
We headed out via 3N32, an easy route to get us back to Holcomb Valley with 1 broken Bronco now along with us.
We met Steph and the girls on Van Dusen and stopped to chat a bit while creating our own version of the squeeze with us on both sides while vehicles squeezed between us.
What a day Thank you Mark andSally Sarah for all the help and keeping the backend under control as our tail gunner 
.
It was an exhausting day full of adventure, education and exercise. Thank you for everyone coming out. I had my hands pretty full all day so unfortunately not a lot of pictures to share
.
For those that were there, Please add details / experiences and pictures & we’ll make it up to you next year with a few more prerequisites for joining this run. Thanks for the ideas for next year @Dusty
One bright note if you are one for Karma, is while Ralph was up the trail trying turn, winch & pull the now 2wheel drive Bronco that blew up his diff & axles littering parts to heck & gone, the guy in the yellow Gladiator with a Bronco recovery sticker rolled up & was honking & yelling at Ralph to get out of the way. Just a real class act kind of guy Would later be posted up on the Fbook page with a busted ball joint or knuckle as the big 40” passenger front barely attached & laying on the ground horizontal. To quote Ralph, "Karma’s a B!tch!!” Couldn’t of happened to a more deserving individual. Ralph shared the pictures at dinner Sat night. I guess this is one time might have wished to have Fbook , but again Never had it Never will (7-Up)
Here are what little pics I have. Please add comments & pictures.
Report can also be seen at:
https://socalbroncos.com/forum/threads/john-bull-6-7-24-trail-report.828/#post-4249
1. Rob Felix 808 22 4-door
2. Terry Miller ‘22 4 door
3. Tom B 21+ 2 door
4. Kin Lam malnik77 23 4 door Kinny Vivian & 2 young boys
5. Marcelino 13 21+ 2-door Lino as he would later be called
6. Rob RollemUp 21+ 4-door
7. Boss Broncos 21+ 2 door Mark &
We met up at the wide section on Van Dusen at 8:30 Where we ran into our friends Ralph & Patrice in their well built classic on 37’s. They made their way out ahead of us to see the show at the Gatekeeper. Tt was great to see them again this year.
The others staggered in. We aired down & had a quick drivers meeting, sync’d radios at pulled out at 9 to start our adventure at Little John Bull. Before starting off, we discovered that Kenny had some kind of rear diff guard on his mostly stock Base Sasquatch base the stole 3”s of ground clearance. The diff is the hardest part on the whole truck and does not benefit from something like this for normal trail use & even rock crawling & would serve as a challenge all day.
We made our way up Little John Bull to the spot where Dave’s classic threw it’s fan into the radiator last year and this was where we were to find Kenny anchored in after being told to take the by-pass. This place must be jinxed
. Out came the Hi-lift with wheel lift attachment and slag factory foot. This combination can do amazing things like jack safely at an angle to the surprise of many concerned doubters. We stacked countless rocks and let the wheel down and was able to get Kinny free.We continued on our way stacking rocks here & there. Unfortunately, this adventure would be a trail tech class all day long
.We made it safely through little John Bull & stopped at the Gatekeeper where we would meet up with Ralph & Patrice again & a solo red 6Gen.
There was a Jeep Rubicon couple that were high centered on Turtle Rock & with their approach was about to lead to exciting times if they did not apply the CYAD method, which is Calm your @$$ down!!! This was one rude chick that did not receive helpful ideas without barking at a number of people, going on about how she ran the Rubicon & blah blah blah. Said this was the first time she ever had to use the winch blah, blah, blah. Lose the attitude, no one cares, just get out of the way. I feel sorry for that dude putting up with that nonsense. The choices we make sometimes
.So while they were winching she was spinning the tires up pretty good. I said easy on the throttle for which she barked back “I'M BARELY TOUCHING IT!!! ” I was just waiting for one of those tires to land and their fun would be over pretty quick.
Once freed from Turtle Rock, the guy was having her take an insane off-camber line unnecessarily that was close to putting it on it’s lid for which Ralph tried to help them again and was barked at.
Once they were out of the way, Ralph cruised through the gate keeper but did get a little sideways in the turn after Turtle Rock.
I was next, I was doing good until turtle rock got me as I slid off the slippery dust covered rock into a high centered situation. This dust makes the rocks like ice. The crew packed a few rocks, but we ended up just pulling cable. It didn’t take much and I was on my way climbing up the hill on the off caber left side only to be thwarted by the dusty slippery rocks again that kept throwing me into the passenger wall. I was getting ready to pull more cable when
The crew started building a road and Tom was next through the gap and up the hill. Next was Lino. Then the real challenge came when Kenny went for it & surprise the diff got anchored again. The front and rear were both floating. We tried to do a redirect pull with Rob’s winch but the rear differential was too hung up. We had Mark bring his truck with a winch up to drag Kinny back and proceeded to build a road. Then we went back to our redirect pull class and dragged Kinny up and over. He ended up running over RollemUp Rob’s winch line, which didn’t make Rob too happy. Maybe conniption would be a better word for it
. Fortunately, there was no harm done. We moved the trucks up the trail to make room for the others & waited. Then waited some more & even waited some more.Apparently, RollemUp Rob was having a rough time of it as we waited pushing 1 ½+hrs. and the final 3 still hadn’t made it up & we were holding up a large group of classics & a real jerk in Yellow Gladiator .
Later I would here some unpleasant stories about what was happening down the hill from the folks that were down there
. I had already gone up & down the hill a number of times and tweaked my knee as I about fell on my face when we were rigging Marks truck up, so I didn’t have any desire to hike down the hill again. That fine dust makes the rocks & trail slippery as ice just walking it.I kept calling on the radio every so often only to hear we’re working on it.
Ralph had returned back down the trail stating that the other single 6G had grenade'd his front diff & sent axle parts flying to heck & gone
. Ralph and his wife said that the trail was really rough this year and much worse than what we’ve been through earlier in the day.Taking into account Ralph’s thoughts, who is not a bypass Bob kind of guy by any means, if not the polar opposite and his wife saying how bad the trail had gotten, I decided it was best for us to turn back, as we were at an experience and equipment deficit and we had given quite the trail craft class all day long
.Personally, I was pretty gassed at this point and we had a long way to go as we were basically at the start of the real John Bull & it was getting late in the day. I had no intentions of missing the Potluck dinner that night but really it would have made a long day into a long night had we kept going & it would have been a whole lot of no fun keeping after it. I felt it best to get everybody back safe and unbroken
.Lino parted ways with us and continued on with the classics. We didn’t see him later at the pot luck, so not sure how that played out. If we hadn’t turned around when we had, we would still likely be out there jacking and stacking and pulling cable for miles on end
.We headed out via 3N32, an easy route to get us back to Holcomb Valley with 1 broken Bronco now along with us.
We met Steph and the girls on Van Dusen and stopped to chat a bit while creating our own version of the squeeze with us on both sides while vehicles squeezed between us.
What a day Thank you Mark and
.It was an exhausting day full of adventure, education and exercise. Thank you for everyone coming out. I had my hands pretty full all day so unfortunately not a lot of pictures to share
.For those that were there, Please add details / experiences and pictures & we’ll make it up to you next year with a few more prerequisites for joining this run. Thanks for the ideas for next year @Dusty
One bright note if you are one for Karma, is while Ralph was up the trail trying turn, winch & pull the now 2wheel drive Bronco that blew up his diff & axles littering parts to heck & gone, the guy in the yellow Gladiator with a Bronco recovery sticker rolled up & was honking & yelling at Ralph to get out of the way. Just a real class act kind of guy
Would later be posted up on the Fbook page with a busted ball joint or knuckle as the big 40” passenger front barely attached & laying on the ground horizontal. To quote Ralph, "Karma’s a B!tch!!” Couldn’t of happened to a more deserving individual. Ralph shared the pictures at dinner Sat night. I guess this is one time might have wished to have Fbook , but again Never had it Never will (7-Up)Here are what little pics I have. Please add comments & pictures.
Report can also be seen at:
https://socalbroncos.com/forum/threads/john-bull-6-7-24-trail-report.828/#post-4249
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looks like broken on the trail. Someone got photos of it.
