NextStepDesigns

Today Rover buddy Ed Quinn, his daughter, his Discovery, and I challenged the Cleghorn trail. This is a trail in the Cajon Pass area of the 15 freeway in SoCal, on the way to Victorville. The main trail is easy, mostly a 1 out of 5, with a few areas where ground clearance and supple suspension is helpful. However, paralleling this well maintained road, is a knarly set of “off set” trails that can be extremely challenging. We took all the off set trails except for three of them. Two were trails where I have seen Jeeps roll sideways, and one was a trail that we made it through 90% of the way, only to be thwarted by a hairy rock ledge decent that had “fender eater” written all over it. We managed a complicated and technical reversal, and continued on our way. My highlight was that both us managed to climb a hill that a group of four-wheeler ATV’s could not. That was fun. Those dudes looked shocked that we would even try, and even more amazed when we charged up it all the way to the top! Man do I wish I had that on camera!

Another highlight for me was that I was able to successfully climb several areas today that had stopped me only one week before. This LR3 is amazing, and loves to climb. I had an easier time climbing several steep pitches than Ed did with his fully built, 3″ lifted off road equipped Disco with ARB lockers. That was immensely satisfying

Click here for the photo gallery (80 or so photos of the day)

This a fantastic video documentary from an English journalist. He challenges a British tank to a contest. They start at the same point, and the Rover needs to reach a distant wood across a practice battlefield. The tank needs to try to shoot him before he gets there. It’s a fascinating video, full of surprises, tactics, wit and of course, Range Rovering!

Click here for the video (please ignore all the distractions fringing the screen of the video player…you’ll see what I mean

I read on the SCLR forum that some guys were getting together at Cleghorn trail near Cajon Pass on Saturday. Unfortunately, I had plans to attend a glider race at Grass Mountain, considerably north up in San Fransicito Canyon area. Well, we were socked in with low clouds, so opted to head to Cajon Pass which is much lower in elevation. However, by the time we got there, it was socked in also! At about 2:30 pm, the stalwart glider pilots decided to call it a day, and go home. Here are photos from that morning’s excursions:

www.socalsloperacing.com/gallery/mom/20060415

Not willing to go home in such a potentially fun area, I remembered this SCLR trip to Cleghorn, and thought I would give it a try. I know I know, never go 4×4′ing by yourself. So I met two guys with nicely built Jeeps at the base of the trail, swapped radio freq’s, and up we went.

Here are some photos of that Cleghorn trail. The main road is a blvd of a trail, flat, smooth, very well maintained. There are offshoots all over the place, like Cajon, but legal to wheel on with 4×4’s (unlike Cajon). This trail was a Total blast. Extremely foggy when I got up there, couldn’t see anything, but we went up the more extreme parallel trails a number of times and scared myself pretty good. Didn’t get many photos, as I was hanging on pretty tightly. Both Jeepers I was with ended up on their sides. Man I wish I had photos of that spot, it was knarly.

Photo Gallery: (37 images)

Other photos from a group of Land Rover guys where there earlier in the day.
- http://spaces.msn.com/roverlove/
- www.thesharpedge.net/photo/ (scroll down to Cleghorn)

Lots of fun, and it’s free!
(damage and repair not included)

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Trail info:
WHERE: Cleghorn Ridge Trail (2N47)
Travels east/west or reverse between I-15 and Hwy 138
Near Cajon Pass

DIRECTIONS: LA BASIN – I-15 north to Cleghorn exit.
(one exit before of Hwy 138 where the Chevron gas station is)

Trailhead is at the Cleghorn exit off Interstate 15 to the east. The entire trail is about 15 miles long and if driven straight through can be as short as 2 hours. The trail has many side routes ranging from easy to very difficult.

See this link for trail info and maps:
www.ttora-socal.com/gallery/arrowhead

Had fun today exploring the San Gabriel Wilderness in Azusa, CA.

This weekend is the our first weekend with the new LR3, and what should we do to welcome it into the family? Why…go off roading of course! So I grabbed an Adventure Pass, loaded the kids and wife into the car, and headed for one of my favorite flying spots at Cajon Pass. Fortunately, it had recently rained…a lot! So the trails were thoroughly muddy and we had a total blast storming through the mud.

This is a link to a photo gallery of the day: Cajon Pass in the mud
This is a link to a hilarious video shot onboard during one particularly impressive mud run (28mb WAV file).

Here are a few teaser shots (click to enlarge):