January 12, 2002 - The annual winter trips up to this remote location are of a different variety.  Not everyone who make this trip up into the mountains of PA are here for the 4 wheeling.  Some come for the beer.  Beer around the camp fire, beer at the bar and beer at breakfast.  It's sort of become an annual event in our group but it's not all about the beer.  Winter trips up here vary from the kind of weekends where you can hit almost every trail in these valleys to those where you're lucky if you can get back to the cabin.  This trip was one of those better kind for 4 wheeling.  Our group consisted of a good handful of 4x4's of the Jeep and Toyota variety along with an earlier bone stock Ford Bronco II which did surprisingly well.  The weather was decent with a mainly cloudy cold weekend and not as much snow as expected.

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Saturday morning exploration...
After throwing a few logs on the fire at just about early pre-dawn, I decided to head out for a run around the property.  I discovered an old logging trail visible only because of the winters lack of underbrush and a little snow to highlight the trail.  What I found was a field at the end of this trail which we later connected to a lower trail on the property making a large loop that offered some challenging navigation through the underbrush and over and around rocks.  Plans are to re-visit this trail in the spring to finish cleaning it up and then blaze a new one to a large out-crop of rock that looks promising to be a great destination to hang out.  Best of all is that it's on the property.

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I know Darrell is going to cringe when he sees this but here it goes anyway... Friday night Darrell ditched it.  While attempting to do a u-turn the ditch grabbed his beefy Ford hauling the quads in the back of the truck and on the trailer he was pulling.  We got the call that he was stuck and came out to the main road to assist him.

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These were shots of the field
      
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Surrounding pics were some playtime on a pile of rocks.  Seems everyone got into the fun.  Carl was showing off the serious flex of his TJ with a 4.5" Rubicon Express lift.

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  After playing around on the rocks for a while we headed down into the valley.  Some years we aren't too eager to descend down the narrow trails that overlook steep drop-offs but this year with the lack of any serious snowfall it wasn't a problem to explore most of the trails.

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 As with winter exploration, many of the previously unseen old trails become evident due to the lack of underbrush and the snow that highlights the trails as well as where old trails used to be.  What appeared to be a trail that diverted off our much traveled trail was actually a dead end.  Thinking I found a shortcut up the hill what I actually found was that old pine stump that grabbed hold of my front suspension.  I required a yank back from Steve in his locked YJ. (pictured to the right)

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