Fordyce Update 2
We hit the trail Friday night and camped past Drive line Hill, which was fun in the dark. We went out and met the other 2 rigs that came with us. On the way to the first water crossing we had Flat, probably cause my Toyos are 10 years old and have 40k miles on them. We swapped the spare and were on our way. The water was not that high and flow was 270ish. I crossed with my half doors and had no water inside. the two jeeps with me had open doors and ended up with fish bowls in their floor pans. All pics came from my friend who does photography for motocross professionally.
The water did mess with one of our Jeeps as it caused the transmission to have trouble talking to the computer so it wouldn't go in gear. So the other two Jeeps turned around and headed out vs. risk having a Jeep that wouldn't drive on the trail. The good news is once they got back to the staging area and went into 2wd all the computer issues went away and they made it home safely.
Since I was on a bucket list mission and still had 4 good tires we pressed on. There were several groups on the trail so we were optimistic if we needed help we could find it.
Winch Hill 1, i had done before but it looked as knarly as ever. I would say climbing it was the most vertical I got all day.
Winch Hill 2 was dusty but not much of a challenge, Water crossing 2 was small but as deep as 1, Water crossing 3 was running like a freight train. We started and could tell this was the deepest. Once we started we just kept going.
Winch Hill 3 has several lines. The "hard line" is basically a tub with 2ft of water and oil in the bottom. If i was in a buggy I might play around in there, we watched someone for 30 minutes go no where, but we wanted to do the trail so we took the second hardest line, which was no cake walk, but doable.
Winch Hill 4 had a non named long hill in front of it littered with broken Toyota and a broken Jeep. We had 6 rigs trying to go up and 3 trying to come down, so it was a bit of a wait for people to push the broken rigs out of the way and to let the 3 buggys come down and then we proceeded up. We honestly don't remember Winch Hill 4 and Winch Hill 5 was not much bigger. After that it was a pretty pedestrian road out and then about 20 miles to the asphalt.
It was definitely worth doing once. If i did it again, I would plan to camp, not because its so hard, just because its a long day. Also there were several side trails/camp sites that looked amazing. The water was flowing and camping by the water would have been a blast. The Jeep did great, I'm over built with the ProRocks, 40s, Atlas and Hemi so I knew it would. Time to go look at new tires..
Huck