Hello All, Here's a trip report for the Saturday and Sunday runs. This was the first time for Ava and I to run any of these trails and it was an awesome weekend to do them.
Actually, neither Ava nor I had ever been to the Horse Gulch campground so before we checked into the Lodge we drove in to see where it was on Friday evening. We found Ellen and Connie already set up in camp and talked to them for awhile, then went into Arnold for the evening.
Run #1: Early Saturday morning (8AM!) we all met back at camp to start out on the Mattley Ridge trail for cleanup. (Others have listed the participants). Ellen led us through both loops of the trail. Mostly it was cleaning up debris, but we did move some branches around to detour around a bypass due to a fallen log. None of us had a chainsaw, so that's the best we could do at the time. It had been a long day so we all dispersed to relax for the evening.
Run #2: Sunday morning, we slept in and met at 9AM at the Corral Hollow trail head. This time it was CJ and Susannah, Rick and Valerie Arneson (and Moke), Loro and Sierra and Alpine, Ellen, and Dennis and Ava. CJ led the way through the trail. We stopped at the cabin (which was occupied by campers) and also stopped at the top of the trail just across the valley from the Bear Valley Ski Runs. Loro and the dogs, Dennis, Ava, and Rick hiked the 1/4 mile to the high point -- which is the highest point in Alpine County. We continued on to highway 4 where we drove up to the gas station/store at Bear Valley. There we rested, (some had ice cream!) then we continued to a lunch spot at the falls on the Slick rock trail.minus Loro who decided to drive home with her ailing Bronco (I hope she made it ok.)
Run #3: So, three runs in two days! I had heard quite a bit of talk about Slickrock and have wanted to try it for a long time. After we had lunch, Ellen headed for home and the Arneson's made a Toyota sandwich with their CJ's on the trail. This was an awesome trail, and showed me that I had made some good choices on the mods to the 4Runner. I had no problems running this trail and got considerably less damage than the Deer Valley run several years ago. I broke in the sliders!!! The lockers worked great and the crawler gears really made the going much easier. Below is a link to a picture of CJ guiding me up the stair step at the end of the trail. I had a wonderful time all weekend.
http://i654.photobucket.com/albums/uu270/DKHoller/AdoptaTrail09/P6280149.jpg