My group has been known to put together some impromptu meetings at our local OHV park in the past. I like to use our local OHV Park as a training center for future backcountry trips. A friend just picked up a new Jeep Wrangler Willys and wanted to take it to our local park, Northwest OHV Park in Bridgeport, Texas. His previous ride was a Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk with a beefy set of rock sliders that I’ve seen in use the last trip we took in December. I don’t know if getting winched out twice during our last trip was a contributing factor to the vehicle change, but I was happy to see him join the Wrangler team.
We agreed on Sunday, February 12th as our meeting date and I asked him if we should invite a few of our fellow Soft Roaders along for the trip. I made a post in our Facebook group a week before the trip and then later posted the event to our Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/northamericansoftroaders/
I labeled the trip the Softroaders Beginner Meet since we were going to test out our friend Tim’s new Wrangler. I didn’t want to take him on anything too difficult just yet, we were going to save that for next time. We scheduled for a group of people to meet up at the local Buc-ee’s at 9AM so that we could convoy to the local OHV Park. Buc-ee’s is a Texas travel stop that has endless snacks and probably the cleanest rest stop bathrooms in the country.
I spotted a few people inside Buc-cee’s that I knew were part of the group. I grabbed some lunch for later and headed outside to where the group was parked. I chatted with a few people, a lot of them I’ve never met before and a few of them familiar friends. Shortly we were on our way and headed west to WBridgeport. It was about a 45-minute drive from Buc-cee’s to the OHV park.
I can’t remember exactly how many were in our convoy but I can say that we may have disrupted traffic along HWY 287 and 380 just a little bit. Our comms for the day would be CB radio, and at the beginning I could hear the middle and rear vehicles in the pack just fine. That didn’t last the rest of the day unfortunately, I was only on a handheld CB (Midland 75-822).
When managing larger groups I’ve noticed that our trend was to always be late on scheduling, and of course we were running late as usual. I decided to break the group into two. One group being my beginner group that I would be leading and another group being an intermediate group led by a couple of good friends of mine Dan and Andrew. To my surprise, most of the people that came wanted to join in on my beginner/introductory group.
I lined our group up to where the more capable vehicles were up front and the softroaders were at the rear of the group in case they needed some assistance. This was to prevent people at the back of the group from getting bored and to give the newer drivers time to observe, analyze, and contemplate.
The first route planned for the morning was to enter the North Loop and then make a clockwise route around the South Loop. As part of my introductory trail route for the day this was the easiest section of the park.
At the entrance of the North Loop I ran into a friend that was out there riding dirtbikes with his dad. I stopped to chat with him for a minute or so and of course I had a large group collecting behind me...
Going from the South Loop to the North Loop, some of the trail has been washed out so I usually have to get out and make sure that everyone makes it past.
The South Loop offers a more varied terrain including rutted out trails and a few short climbs. We had the group moving along pretty nicely.
We parked all of our vehicles at the top of the Five Hills in the South Loop and I took a few people with me to go check out a rutted section at the Southernmost section of the Loop to see if some people were willing to try it. Most of the group attempted it while I took a couple of people back the way we came in to meet them at the Northern section of the South Loop. A couple of Jeepers coming through the area got a surprise audience as they were passing through.
The group made quick work of the rutted section, fortunately the trails were completely dry that day so we didn’t have a lot of problems.
When we met up at High Top at the northside of the South Loop we ran into our intermediate group while they were tackling High Top.
After watching the Intermediate group for a few minutes, we gathered up and headed to the exit through a section we call Three-Wheel Junction. The junction requires a decent amount of ground clearance or some creative driving lines to get through.
After making sure everyone in our group made it through safely, I grabbed the rest of the group that didn’t want to try the Junction and took them back through the North Loop. Christopher led the group down into the quarry where they waited for us to meet up with them.
It looked like they were having fun in the Quarry while they were waiting for us.
By the time we all met up at the quarry it was after 12:00PM so I thought that it was a good time to break for lunch. We all met up at lunch at the Pavilion and I called Dan to tell him that we were breaking for lunch.
We never saw the Intermediate team because they were off doing other things without us.
They didn’t go to lunch until after we were back on the trails.
A few people decided to leave during lunch for various reasons, we said our goodbyes and I hope to see them again in the future. After lunch we headed to a trail called Ridgeline that is the highest point in the park. Harry’s Ridgeline caught it’s lower control arm on a rock on Ridgeline trail, but we quickly got him backed up and going down the right direction on the trail. I think the damage was only superficial.
The best part of Ridgeline trail is the exit if you’re going from East to West. We call the exit Rocky Balboa because it is a rocky downhill that’s pretty easy if you choose the right line. The line usually involves one wheel off the ground.
After Rocky Balboa we headed down to the Spiderwebs where there was some more technical sections of trail. Whenever I do an introductory trail group I always start off easy and increase the trail difficulty by sections. The Spiderweb section of the park is my most hated and we usually end up wasting hours because it always becomes a stuck-fest. I planned on just doing an entry into the Spiderwebs and then taking a trail immediately back out.
Entrance into the Spider Webs from the Asplund Connector.
Once we entered the area, there were two ways out. I sent all of the live axle guys toward the west exit on a trail next to the connector and the softroaders toward the east exit through Hatchett bypass. I led the softroaders out and waited for the rest of the guys under the powerline road. After about ten minutes I overhead radio chatter about somebody thinking about going through some water. That’s never good news.
They were at the section where Andrew had to get recovered from in his XJ with the Intermediate group, meaning they missed the turn to get out of the Spiderwebs.
After I realized where we were I told the other guys to wait up while I went in and found the group as fast as I could before they could get into any trouble. Fortunately by the time I got there almost everyone had made it through.
We met up with the other guys at the top of the Powerlines road and once again we lost half of the group (They went to the Pavilion). I’ll have some specific rules for our next meetup to make sure that we keep an eye on the people behind us so that we don’t lose anyone on the trails.
Some of the trail carnage from the day, all of them from the Intermediate group:
This failure happened while driving on the access road and not on the trails fortunately.
Some shots from the Intermediate group, it looks like they did more wheeling than picture taking so with didn’t get many pictures from them.
I know this is not an expedition trip. We usually don’t do our convoys until after the summer, but I always like to use the local OHV park as a training ground for future members of our group. You can see all of our trips on our page:
https://www.facebook.com/northamericansoftroaders/
For a trip that we put together in a week, I was surprised to have so many people join us. It was great meeting everyone and I hope to see everyone again. It’s always a great group of people with such a diverse range of vehicles. We had some excellent trail spotters, and everyone contributed their pictures to our page so I was able to put this report together.
And for the ones from far away, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!
Bonus - Len added 3 hours of unedited dashcam footage from his Cherokee: