Night Run, Island Style

It's all Larry Soo's fault. Really. You see, I was supposed to head to the mainland this weekend and do some visiting. But for various reasons, that just wasn't in the cards. So when Rob Brooks phoned me up Friday night and asked if I could spend another day helping on his new Toyota 4x4 project, I said sure. The day progressed quite well, and we made excellent progress on his project. The drivetrain was finally assembled, and we mounted his spare gas tank. But, during the day, we started teasing a mutual friend, Brian, about doing a night run. I don't think any of us were very serious, but he was...

So come ~9pm, Brian shows up and really starts bugging us if we are ready to leave on the night run. The Swampers weren't on my truck, so I said that my truck wouldn't be going. "No problem", said Rob Brooks, "you can ride with Brian and Beener can ride with me." A few others (Wayne, Rick, and another Rob) were invited along, but they were going hunting the next morning. They joked, saying they expected to see us returning just about the time they would be leaving to go hunting. Yeah, sure, we weren't going to do anything like the D.S.S., just PigPen's Revenge. Easy, quick, back before we get too far into the wee hours. The last 3 night runs had all completed sometime after 4am, we weren't going to have that happen again. Or so the plan was. :-)

It was midnight once we were all gased up and ready to go. Right on time. Next stop, Boneyard Road to air down. Hm. Change of plans. Beener and Rob Brooks want to do Escalator instead. Hm. No problem, the trail is a bit further out, but it's still quite easy and short. Brian's Scout II was freshly sprung over, welded in the front diff, and running new 35" MT's. Shouldn't be a problem.

Escalator is named as such because there are essentially two parts to the trail: a nice, long, steady ascent to a fantastic view, and then a quick and very steep descent back down. With a half-dozen trucks, you can usually get over the trail in a few hours. With only two trucks, an hour to traverse the trail is not out of the question.

Rob Brooks leads in his black Toyota pickup, locked F&R, winch. Why is he turning "here"? Hm. Oh, okay, he wants to run the Escalator backwards. Never done this before! This should be fun! A steep ascent instead of a steep descent. Rob shows us how it's done, driving up the ascent really easily. Brian, still a bit unsure of his Scout, decides that discression is the better part of valour, and opts for the bypass at the base of the ascent. He has a few minor problems cresting the hill, but nothing that warrants even hopping out and re-assessing any situation. This is good!

The rest of the drive to the entrance of Escalator was pretty steady and smooth, too. Brian managed to get a tire in the air once or twice, and get sideways a few times, but no problems. This is good! We didn't really see Rob Brooks too much, he was travelling rather quickly, it isn't a hard trail. Looking at our watches, we should be back in Sooke before, oh, 2am. Great! For once things are going as planned!

Then Brian had to mention that he didn't need "the hook" like we had teased him earlier. Great. Rob Brooks then heard a little voice saying "...this is your mission, if you choose to accept it". The Mission? Get Brian on "the hook". The selected location? "No Way Out"/"Gas-it Hill". Maybe I should now mention that we had already opted against doing this trail 'cause Brian doesn't really have any tow points on the front of his Scout yet.

Beener had a premenition as we turned off Boneyard, on our way to "No Way Out". He knew something would happen. If only he had spoken louder! If only he had spoken sooner! If only someone had listened!

Brian's newly modified Scout continued to work great on the trail. Considering how untested his modifications were, and how relatively inexperienced Brian is at driving off-road, things went really well. Still, at the top of "No Way Out", we had to stop and make a quick repair. One of his mufflers had pulled off, we are just coming out of fire season, so we opted for safety and re-attached it.

In the mean time, Rob Brooks made a clean ascent out of "No Way Out". That was, until he got out and had a look at his truck. While he was inspecting a leaking radiator, Beener started berating us for taking too long to start our descent into "No Way Out".

"No Way Out" is so named because you basically slide down a hill to the bottom of a small valley/raviene. Once there, you have a

short but hard ascent to get back out. Only a handful of trucks can drive out under their own power. Turning around and back- tracking where you just slid down is out of the question too. Most trucks end up on "the hook" to get out of "No Way Out".

Brian's was no different. First attempt was bull gear, resulted in even, controlled spinning. 2nd attempt, next gear up, resulted in the truck starting to hop violently. Brian was again quick to avert damage and got on the clutch almost immediately. 3rd try, well, let's get to one side so we aren't trying to go straight up with the front tires. Good torque from his 345, good traction, then "bang!", we lost forward momentum, and we proceeded to gain backwards momentum (back down to the bottom of "No Way Out") rather quickly. A little too quickly to be comfortable. But the truck came to a stop sooner than expected, this was good. We were about a 3rd of the way up the hill, a good spot to winch from. Let's check the damage first.

One busted rear driveshaft. Not a U-joint, the driveshaft was pretzelled right off. No spare. At 2am. This is when Rob Brooks informed us of his leaking radiator. By the time we got up to re- inspect his truck, his radiator was almost completely drained. Joy. One truck broken at the top of the hill, basically immobile cause of no coolant. And our other truck broken, stuck on the hill, with no chance of getting out without a long winch pull. And the winch is on the truck without coolant. And the truck without a driveshaft doesn't have any good front tow points. Things don't look good; so much for getting back before 4am!

The radiator inspection told us that it would not be possible to crimp off some lines for the drive out; the lines were sliced by the fan right at the base of the radiator, there was nothing to crimp. We considered soldering the holes shut, but Rob Brooks had temporarily removed his mini propane torch and solder before the trip for another project. We even tried silicon, but with no way to completely dry out the punctured area, the silicon would only bead away. Things aren't looking any better.

Hey, Rob Brooks has his cell! We could phone Wayne to do a midnight rescue! Hey, better yet, we could phone Larry for him to, well, just know. :-) Yeah, let's phone Larry, it's only just about 2am now! Too bad, no CanTel coverage at "No Way Out". I made a mental note to phone Cantel up and complain about their lack of service out there...:-)

Rob Brooks displays a stunning stroke of ingenuity by re-mounting his radiator upside down.

This is when Rob Brooks earned his McGyver badge. If I hadn't seen this, I wouldn't have believed it. He decided it was possible, then proceeded to mount his radiator upside down. This would place the cut lines at the top of the rad, so it couldn't drain itself as quickly, and would hopefully work long enough to get us out. Definitely a trail fix, and one that may get us out of the bush. After about a half-hour of fiddling with some spare rad hoses, then bolting and zap-strapping his radiator back in place, then refilling his cooling system with some water (this guy comes prepared for anything!), he had his truck running again. The catch was we had to be careful; we couldn't run the truck too hot, and we couldn't torque it too much going forward or the fan promised to dig into the radiator again.

In our (my) excitement, we were (I was) ready to hop in and drive. ...oh right, Brian's Scout was still stuck half-way up of "No Way Out". Definitely a winch job...Rob's Mission had been successful, though we weren't that concerned about that any more. First idea: let's back Rob's truck down next to Brian's, then pulley the cable off a tree from the top, get Brian's truck up, then get Rob's back up. The plan seems sound enough, "Make it so".

Rob took his time getting lined up for a nice descent in next to Brian's Scout. Except for high torque situations resulting in the fan trying to cut the radiator, his truck was running good. Engine temperature was cool. Then, the 3 of us (Brian, Beener, and myself), then got to watch possibly the slowest rollover in history. I'm convinced it took over a minute for Rob's truck to start to, then stop and think about, then proceed to sit on its side rather than it's 4 wheels.

His nerf bars worked great. They didn't dent or roll in at all. Unfortunately, they couldn't save the driver's door, which now has a big dent that's pushed in about a half-foot! Rob thinks that it will open, but he didn't want to try for fear it wouldn't shut again.

Okay, this is really neat now. We still have a broken Scout to deal with. Now, parked next to it on the hill is a Toyota whose rad is mounted upside down, laying on its side! We did the usuals like "hey, that's cool!", and "hey, we gotta get a picture of this", and "hey, this looks even neater with the rock lights on!". But how do we get ourselves out of this, and hopefully back to Sooke before daylight? Our aim now was to get to Wayne's place before he left for hunting. Forget the 4am deadline, we were aiming for a 5:30am deadline.

Rob proudly poses beside his handiwork.

Hmm...so is his radiator leaking faster or slower now?

Well, the four of us were able to right Rob's truck, and he was able to winch and drive out. We then repositioned Rob's truck to pulley off Brian's, back up to a tree. With no good tow points, we had to use a front shackle. At least the frame mount and the shackle had both been beefed up a lot. Not safe, but it may do the trick, and we had no alternative. And with the help of the winch, Brian's truck did in fact make good forward progress up the hill! But we had to cut that short too.

We had forgot to remove the broken portions of the rear drive- shaft, which were now flopping all over the place under there.

Having fixed that, it was pretty straightforward to get Brian's truck up and out of "No Way Out". Whew! Finally! I think Rob said it was about 5:15 at this point. Time to go home! No Gas-it Hill for us today! We'll take the easy way out, via Gollege Creek.

For the most point, this leg of the trip went like the night run started. A few little things, but they were all dealt with easily. But back on Boneyard, Rob's truck was starting to run hot so he made a quick run for home. Brian and I had to proceed slowly. We only had front wheel drive, since the front diff was welded, we opted to go for one-wheel drive so that he could steer, and we (hopefully) wouldn't blow out any front U-joints or what-have-you.

We re-grouped at Rob Brooks' house at 7am sharp. We were all naturally quite tired. And we didn't get to Wayne's before he left for hunting. D*mn! We were all hungry, but we decided sleep would be better than breakfast.

So this night run ended good. So good that we're already toying with doing another one! Anyone want to join us? I'm personally thinking D.S.S., 3 night runs in a row there have resulted in breakage, it's time to try to stop that trend! Then again, "No Way Out" beat us, so maybe we should return there...

Oh yeah, how is all of this Larry's fault? Uhm, I'm not exactly sure, but give me some time and I'll come up with something. :-)

-- Rob Bryce