Snowy Saturday

We had constant snow fall adding to our powder totals today.   We randomly met up with a bunch of people in our group on the bus ride up to Eagle Lodge which ended up to be two bus stops away from our cabin.  I have to say it was quite easy getting back and forth on the shuttle.  I usually like driving myself up the mountain, but now I  wouldn’t mind taking the bus as long as a stop is nearby.  I believe we were on the mountain pretty close to 8:30 which is when the lifts start going and we ended around 4:15.   The gondola and upper parts of the mountain were closed off today, but we still had a great time exploring the mountain and cutting up the tree lines.  After getting back to the cabin we had a delicious dinner cooked by our other cabin mates.  After some fun and games we called it a night and got ready for the next day!

Super Bowl Sunday

Up at 7am again and got to the mountain at around 9:30.  We had to load up the car today to migrate to our friend Danny’s cabin.  Danny actually rents the cabin with 7 or so other people for 6-months out of the year.  It was funny since we also have another friend that does the same thing.  After a little while we put two and two together and realized it was the same cabin and Danny and our friend Steve were both on the same lease!  Ann and I had stayed in Steve’s cabin once before so this would be our second time.  What a small world!  We end up closing out the day at 4:30ish when the lifts were about to close.  We got back to Danny’s cabin with 2 minutes left before Superbowl Half-Time.  I have to say that it was a great game and the Saints were playing to win.  After the game we hung out with our now 4 person boarding crew, had some good eats again thanks to Hung’s famous pulled pork and headed off to bed to get ready for another day of pow!

Blue Bird Monday

Out and at the lifts at approx 8:30am again.  We hung out with Danny today and hit up a bunch of chairs with him.  Today was the first day we  boarded Cornice Bowl and it was a blast!  Epic!  Conditions were perfect for the steepness on Cornice so we had no problems carving it up.   We dropped down Scotty’s once and I pretty much thought it was miserable.  That run was just too tracked up and moguled for us to enjoy it.  The knees and legs were suffering through that one.  We did explore the backside of the mountain and had a good time there as well except for some major stuckage in some really fresh pow. After getting the last 4:30pm lift ride up the mountain we made sure we made the best of it.  We boarded hard and fast and left all we had left on the mountain.

All in all it was an excellent trip and couldn’t have gone any smoother.   The snow conditions couldn’t have been better and the blue bird Monday was a great ending to an EPIC trip!

Anyway, here are the limited pics I took during our trip.   I haven’t deleted or edited anything so everything is there for your enjoyment.

The cabin that Ann booked was a small little cottage which was a good fit for 3 people, but could probably fit 4 in a pinch.  We really can’t complain because we got an awesome deal!  I think it was somewhere around $50/night and we got hookups for lift tickets for $40 each day as well.  

Tuesday was bear mountain day.   Bear is more known for their parks and more advanced runs.   The conditions didn’t seem as great as Summit but we found a tree-run off of Chair 3 that we had a blast on.   I  believe we spent most of our time on Chair 4 to stay away from the long lift lines again.   The last two days we ended up boarding at Summit since the conditions were a little better and we found a tree run we liked near chair 7.   All in all it was a fun trip.   We had some good eats Ribs, Pulled Pork, Fried Rice and discovered a new ice cream flavor “Tin Roof” which was great.  I only banged my knee a couple of times  and we weren’t too tired at the beginning of each day.  We topped it off with all-you can eat Sushi down in Corona which was a great ending for an awesome trip.   I’ll be back there again!  I think I need a Mammoth trip here pretty soon!  These local mountains are tooooo Tiny!

Big Bear 12/14 – 12/17

Taken with an old ass Canon 55mm 1.2!

My meaty but old BFG ATs were burping air all the way through Bronco and that finally caught up to me towards the end of the trip.  I ended up blowing a bead and having to put on the spare.   That’s what I get for using my ghetto old street tires on the trail and airing them down to 14psi.  If I ever do wheel with those tires again I’ll make sure to keep it around 18psi.

We had a lot of fun and I can’t wait to go again and check out the connector trail!  I heard the hardest part is only 300 yards away from the exit so we can do a short hike to it and see what we’re up against.

Here are some select pics of the trip!

Complete Pic link below also.  Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/ronald.tan/CorralCanyon?feat=directlink

Enter the OX Locker!

Ox Locker

The ox locker is cable actuated, but it also has optional air and electric actuation as well.   This thing is REALLY beefy.  I can barely carry the damn thing!  Now I have what I need to get my gears installed into my Dana 44.  I’ll be shopping around for some good prices on a master install kit and for a shop that can do the install.   I was playing around with the idea of doing it myself, but I’m not sure if I trust my skills enough to do it!

For more info on the locker you can take a look at the goodness here!

http://www.ox-usa.com/ox/

 I ended up tossing in some 3/4″ washers to offset the shocks a bit to help prevent the leaf springs from hitting the shock bodies.  I’ll try to cycle the suspension to see if it is really necessary.

Took the truck for a test drive and it seemed to handle well.   Can’t wait to put them to the offroading test soon!

Still playing around with my dad’s 20d and shot this at Manual 1/30 sec F2.0.

I’ve been looking around for what a good shock upgrade would be and found that the Short Body Bilstein 7100s were the ticket.  They gave you a good amount of extension with a smaller shock body that can fit in the stock location.  I found a set of 10″ 7100s resevoir shocks on pirate4×4 for a resonable price and ended up picking them up.  I’ve attached some shock pRon for you to oogle!

As you can see they came with some nice Outlaw Offroad mounts and are in pretty good shape still.  These puppies are completely user rebuildable and revalvable.  The current valving is 170/60 which I hear is perfect for the weight of a Tacoma.   I heard some feedback on TTORA that 255/70 was a little too harsh so I got lucky scoring the lighter valved version.  

The installation will be a little more challenging than I first thought.  The 7100s come with 1/2″ ID heim joints which of course won’t mount to the 3/4″ OD Tacoma Shock mounts.  I toyed around with the idea of adding some 12mm reduction misalignment spacers and using a 12mm bolt off the stock mounts like someone on TTORA did,  but decided against it.  The setup puts an enormous amount of leverage on the stock mounts, and I don’t believe I have enough room with my huge 33″ spare to fit the shocks inboard where they would need to be. 

The current plan is to remove the heims and purchase some Energy Suspension hourglass shaped bushings that I can hopefully stuff into the 1″ eye openings.   The specs are 3/4″ ID. 1″ min O.D. 1 1/8″ MAX OD  1 7/16″ long.  The Energy Suspension part is will be 9.8108r for the red bushings.   They are $4.59 / pair from Kragen so I’ll put in an order tomorrow for a set to try out.  Hopefully all will come together and I’ll have my shocks ready to rock in a few days!!

N had to air down after getting stuck with his BFG Rugged Trail Racing slicks.  Airing down helped out a bit but we still had to try a couple of different lines to get him up the trail.  We knew that if I got stuck higher up there would be no chance for him at all.   We kept climbing up, and the snow and mud kept getting worse.  We got to a point where we couldn’t climb any more and decided to go back down.  Later on we found our way to the top and went down the portion of the trail that we couldn’t climb.  We found out then that we were very close to the top already and there wasn’t much more to see.  All in all it was a great trip and I’d definitely go again. Here are some pics! Sorry only cell phone pics… forgot the 20D at home!