Labor Day weekend 2017 has been an interesting one to say the least. Texans were busy the week before Labor Day with Hurricane Harvey that shut down Houston and surrounding Gulf Coast cities. Since a few refineries were down and major Interstates were closed because of flooding, we weren’t getting the normal supply of fuel in North Texas. By Wednesday, smaller gas stations had ran out of fuel. When Thursday came around it was a full blown panic in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
What didn’t help the situation were the hoarders that were putting gas in whatever they had available. I don’t think these people understood the chemical properties of gasoline...
As a result, many major gas stations were out of fuel by the weekend in DFW because of the mass hysteria propagated by local news and local companies.
By Labor Day, we were almost back to normal with fuel supplies coming in every few hours. I changed the name of the event to the Gaspocalypse Run to reflect our short-term situation in DFW.
Northwest OHV Park is our local off-road park that is usually open Saturday and Sunday. We use it for an introduction to members of our group and to test out new equipment such as tires, lifts, etc. For Labor Day they opened up the park so we decided to put together a small introductory trails group for the day from 10AM-2PM. Our group, the Soft Roaders, brings in a variety of off-road and softroader type vehicles due to us being a non-denominational off-road/overland group.
A couple of people camped overnight while most of the group arrived between 9:20-9:45 after a short convoy from Bucee’s in Fort Worth led by our guy Kevin.
I arrived with the toddler around 8:30AM to pre-run the trails and get a visual check on water levels around the park trails. The water levels were higher than normal so I had to make an adjustment to the route that unfortunately ended the time on the trail for the softroaders earlier than I would have liked.
We had the standard driver’s meeting covering the buddy system, not blocking trails, staying out of the water, and comms. I grouped the vehicles together according to vehicle types. The Jeeps were at the front of the group, Toyotas were in the middle, and the softroaders trailed at the rear with our recovery driver Randy at the back of the convoy.
Water levels are important at Northwest OHV because unintentional water traps exist throughout the park. This F250 Super Duty was left overnight because they weren’t able to recover it the day before:
It suffered a hydrolocked engine and some flooding in the front floorboard. It took two tow trucks to get it out of the mud. The entire convoy got to drive by the area to see an example of what happens when you are unfamiliar with the area.
Onto the trails:
We took a short break while Eric took some drone footage with his DJI.
Video of the area in the South Loop trail section of the park. We were the only
large group there with about 20 vehicles.
This muddy trail section is what we call Three Wheel Junction and is one of our favorite sections to test out our suspension and tires.
Slowly creeping through the section testing out the traction from the Toyo R/T’s:
During lunch, some guys in a Toyota attempted to flex onto a tree near the picnic pavilion. Things didn’t go as planned:
Fortunately the guys in the Toyota were OK, they climbed out laughing. It had an exo-cage so I assume it was made for situations like this.
Video of everyone helping to upright the fallen Toyota:
After lunch about half the group went home for the day. The morning trail run took almost two hours due to the size of our group.
There was a guy out there in a stock Ford F150 4x4 that happened upon our group and followed us through the trails in the morning route. It was getting hung up in a few places. During lunch I suggested that he park the F150 and ride with me for the afternoon route. I think he had fun the rest of the day riding with us in the Jeep.
We continued on to Ridgeline trail that ends at another one of my favorites we call Rocky Balboa. There’s a certain line you have to take if you don’t have the ground clearance and you always end up with one wheel hanging in the air.
Afternoon group hanging out in the Quarry.
The East Quarry was the end of the line for our friends with the softroaders. We were going to ascend a trail with some large boulder and descend a trail with some rock ledges that were a couple of feet tall. I didn’t want to risk body damage on the Cherokees and the Forester so we said our goodbyes. If the water levels were lower I would have taken them to a route south of the powerlines, but we ran into trouble there last year and I didn’t want a repeat of Stuckfest 2016.
We made our way to the East Perimeter road where the views were both breathtaking and a little terrifying. I ran this same route in the morning and had a heart attack both in the morning and afternoon. We would definitely not be doing this route in the rain.
Final trail section of the day coming down the East Perimeter:
Here’s some footage from Josue’s GoPro of some of the day’s trails before we parted ways:
As always it was a great time in Bridgeport meeting new friends and getting people out on the trails. I’d like to give thanks to everyone that took photos and videos throughout the day, Kevin, Randy, Ashlee, Josue, Eric, John, and Syd. Leading the trail group and having the toddler with me left me little to no time for messing with the camera.
What did I learn from this group run? I need to either teach some more people my discovery route or create a map that’s easy to follow so people don’t get lost in the park. I learned from the last trip to put the vehicles that may have some trouble on the trails at the back of the pack so that the more capable ones get through first and are able to help with the rest of the group. A group of 20 is fun, but it takes away from some of our trail time. I had four trail sections planned for the day but we were only able to complete three of them in the time we had.
I’d like to thank everyone for their patience at the Gaspocalypse Run. I know a couple of people left the group to venture out on their own. Thanks to Kevin and Fernando from the Soft Roaders for helping out with the trail group. Thank you Randy for being our recovery vehicle for the day. Thanks to Davin for taking a couple of people and showing them the harder sections of the park. I hope to see everyone again when we continue round 2 of the Gaspocalypse Run in a couple of months!
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