Second annual Las Vegas Jeep Marathon

[MTG]

Last Friday I left my house at 4:30 am and drove 460 miles to Las Vegas for the Warmachines702 second annual jeep marathon. I've received nothing but grief from Adam after skipping last year so I was hell bent on making it this year (more on that later)

Essentially the run was structured as follows: 4 teams each running 3-4 different trails for the better part of the day with all teams meeting up for dinner and then running the last trail together. This year Keith (Skirmish) figured out at way to run all the trails with about 97% of it off pavement. In all it was approximately 160 miles. We ran Tie Rod canyon, Devils Peak, Little Devils Peak and Copper Cache/Gold Mine in Nelson. We started at 8:15 and I think we got home at 1:30 am!

I didn't take many pics this year as I was busy driving and we were time crunched, but here are some of the ones I took. There were several wayalife members on the run, hopefully others got more pics.

Starting with the trip down...


One nice thing about leaving so early is you get beautiful sunrises in the desert.


Las Vegas please.


Knuckles


This place looks familiar, might have seen it in a movie recently.


Who needs a 4x4 when you have the power of a minivan?


There is a whole lot of this between Reno and Vegas...good for clearing the mind.


Who sees the drone?

More below....

 

[Sharkey]

Where's the "more below"?

 

[MTG]

Where's the "more below"?

Fat thumbs and an iphone don't mix. :cheesy:

I suppose I could load all the images to photobucket first? :icon_crazy:

 

[MTG]

The next day we headed south to Jean NV, which was the starting point.


Lining up.




One of the Warmachine members took this, which is much better than mine.


Our team headed to tie rod canyon first which took us on a long drive in the desert.


Our group was two jeeps short. Yep that's right, true to form OverlanderJK, cancelled at the last minute. Nicole Johnson (think Scooby Doo monster truck) was supposed to be in our group too but had damaged her jeep at EJS.


There were several railroad tracks that we had to cross and there are a series on tunnels that allowed us to do so.








This one was pretty tight. I don't know if Moby would have fit.


Horrible view from the top of Tie Rod. :crazyeyes:

More below...

 

[Sharkey]

Fat thumbs and an iphone don't mix. :cheesy:

I suppose I could load all the images to photobucket first? :icon_crazy:

Lol. NO PHOTOBUCKET!!!!!

 

[MTG]

We ran Tie Rod canyon backward and then turned around, ran it again back out. The first obstacle was short but pretty off camber which is always fun while doorless.


Chris leading the way.


Getting a little twisted.




And he's up.


Knuckles heading up.


Here is a picture of Larry Nickel on the obstacle that shows how off camber it was.



Cool lizard taking in the action. Sorry for being so far away, but after Chris had ran over a 3 foot rattlesnake I wasn't too keen to be walking through the grass.

 

[MTG]

Coming out of Tie Rod we ran into another team that had taken a wrong turn. Lost or not that's a sweet bronco.


And yet another team heading to the next trail.


More railroad tracks.


Racing the train.


Knuckles under the tracks.


Ummm...sure.


The trail to Devil's Peak.


Trail head.


Fred and Linda were a couple from Washington we met on Potato Ridge back in 2012. http://wayalife.com/showthread.php?2543-Potato-ridge-rocky-gap-Las-Vegas&highlight=potato+ridge Their two door making it over the first obstacle.


Frank in his rebuilt LJ clearing it. You might remember that he flopped his jeep on last years run.



Oh look! Here's a picture of Overlander working his way up.

:cheesy:

 

[OverlanderJK]

View attachment 82901
Oh look! Here's a picture of Overlander working his way up.

:cheesy:

:cheesy: that's funny!

Oh and you can upload 20 photos per post.

 

[MTG]

Knuckles making quick work of the second obstacle.


Had a few minutes at the top to relax and check out the old mines.


Not too close. They are clearly unsafe.


The path to Little Devil's peak...


...gets a little narrow in places.


Poser shot.

At this point I was tired of taking pics. And by the time we reached the top of little devils it was apparent we had a long wait in front of us. One guy had blown two tires in about 50 yards and we had to winch another jeep off a rock that had him high centered. With time running out and one of our members needing to get to a previous engagement we decided to skip the last obstacle and high tail it to the meet up spot.


I won't say how fast we were going at times but it might start with a 7 and end with a 0. Just kidding of course officer it was 25 the whole way.


Pulling in to the parking lot we caught up with Notajerryskid.



Lining up before a fine gourmet meal at the Gold Strike Hotel buffet.


White Dynamite's day ended a little early with a broke rear axle shaft.




After dinner we gassed up and got ready to run a connector to highway 95 over McCullough mountain.

At this point I stopped taking pics.

 

[MTG]

Although it was a long ass day on the jeep, and an even longer weekend, I had a great time and am looking forward to the next one.

We were going to go to Logandale on Sunday but everyone was beat and some were licking their wounds.

Damage report that I know of:
8 blown tires!
Rear axle shaft
Front axle shaft
Cracked oil pan
Fuel pump
I had a noisy DS u-joint that I pulled before the drive home (thanks Ricky for helping figure it out).
My Nittos took a beating.


So Sunday was clean up day.







I had to work in Vegas Monday and then we bolted home. I dropped my co-driver off at the Reno airport about 11:00 PM, he was bummed he couldn't drive his own jeep down.


Here is the final mileage from the trip.

Something good about driving your jeep 450+ miles to the trail(s), wheeling the hell out of it and driving it home. :rock:

 

[pvanweelden]

Looks like was an awesome trip! :thumb:

 

[72blubyu]

Adam told me about everyone going out to Vegas I missed you guys by a few days. Looked like a good time.:thumb:

 

[xkid]

8 blown tires? Wow

Sent from my SM-N900W8 using WAYALIFE mobile app

 

[OverlanderJK]

Damn they closed that mine at the top of devils? I have pictures from inside last year.

 

[MTG]

Damn they closed that mine at the top of devils? I have pictures from inside last year.

That might be a different one. This was on the left side right after the second obstacle.

 

[swag247]

Was out doing the Tie Rod Canyon/Carnage Canyon run with the Vegas Valley Four Wheeler's and ran into the 702 War Machines group. Got to meet up with some wayalifers and took a few pics... here's two. The group shot is the top of Tie Rod where we hung with the 702 War Machines, nice day! If your wheeling in the Vegas area, this is a great run.

 

[10frank9]

That looked like some good fun right there.

One question though MTG, who was that skinny guy driving your Jeep? :brows:

 

[Rascal3]

Awesome pics Mike thanks for sharing:thumb:

 

[JAGS]

Great recap as usual MTG. That looked like a great time for sure. And the carnage list is rather impressive as well. Maybe this time next year I might be up for the challenge??? A boy can dream right.




- Jason

 

[MTG]

That looked like some good fun right there.

One question though MTG, who was that skinny guy driving your Jeep? :brows:

LOL! Far from skinny my friend, just not quite as fat.