Oak Flats Pre-Run: 2-16-2002
Only a few members were invited & participated.
We meet at the Texaco near Florence junction at 9:00 am. The plan was to run Hackberry creek. It is a trail between Superior and Globe. The turn off is at Oak Flat camp ground. After finding the turn to the entrance of the trail, there was a sign 'closed for mining.'' Tom knew away in thought the back way. We found a place to air down and chat. We didn't waste anytime running into a dead end. But with a few new leaders, the trail was found. The first obstacle was to drive down a very very steep mountain side into a canyon. As we made our way though the trail, we came across some switch backs. Everyone made it around with two point turns. All but one, the wide body. Chuck had big problems with one switch back. He broke his right front locking hub. After making it down we all gathered by the windmill for lunch, and the Blazer got some trail side repairs. Even with a wounded horse at the beginning of the trip we decided to keep on wheeling. Most of the trail (about 70%) of it was rock crawling. Lockers were not needed as much as tall tires. The day ended about 7:00 PM and the only damage was one broken hub, one burned out head light, one loud cracked exhaust manifold, and lots of under carriage scraps. Thanks Tom, Jim, Chuck, and Gary for coming. We will do it again soon.
