Wolf Den Black and Blues! | Capital Off Road Enthusiasts, Inc.

On the weekend of June 6th, the club got together for a weekend camping and Wolf Den Run trailing on some of the Blues and Blacks in the park.

Attendees:

Jendra & Kirk – Jeep JKU
Matt & Steve – Toyota Tacoma
Viran – Ford Bronco
Michael – Ford Bronco
Marco – Toyota Tacoma

Most of us got out to Wolf Den Friday afternoon and set up camp for the weekend. In the morning, Viran met up with us at camp, and joined us for the day drive.

We hit the trails, focusing on the Potomac section of the park, and the newly crowned Jeep Badge of Honor Trail. These were pleasant, offering some mild rock obstacles as we made our way through. We certainly noticed some erosion over time, exposing more rocks than we’ve seen in the past, but everything was pretty doable in a stock 4×4 with careful tire placement. With the recent rains and shaded trails, things were pretty greasy out there, so we had to be careful as traction was hard to find in some places.

On the topic of tires, something to be mindful in these areas is tire pressure. If you are not running stronger offroad tires, then you cannot air down too far. The rocks on the trail are sharp and will cause your sidewall to fold over, and potentially cut against the rim. On a set of 35 inch BFG KO3s, in a mid to upper 5k lb Jeep, I aired down to low 20s, and had no issues, but another truck that was rear heavy on 33 inch Falken Wildpeak AT3Ws with softer sidewalls was at a similar pressure, and his rim came up right against the rocks as he went over, and he had to air up to mid 20s to keep the tire from folding over too far.

On a particular part of the trail, Viran’s bronco attempted to drive over a rock, and as a result of the slick conditions, slid sideways and came within inches of hitting a rock wall. Because of the angle of the rock he was on, any additional throttle was sliding him towards the rock face. Because he didn’t have a winch, he had to be winched from the rear, off of a pulley block on a side tree, to drag his rear away from the rock, allowing him to take an alternate higher line to avoid sliding sideways. Some of the remaining vehicles took this safer line as well.

At this point, we continued along, and noticed that Michael’s Bronco had a tire leak. It looked like a pretty classic screw puncture, right through the tread, which was uncommon on the trail, but it was slow enough for us to get to a safer flatter part of the trail to plug.

After posing under the cool rock formation, we continued on to a flat spot, plugged Michael’s tire, and continued on our way towards a lunch break.

After lunch, we headed over to the 1200s, to check out some of the black trail options. We came across one particular spicy climb, up a slick path, which had a kink about halfway up, with a rock/tree root in the middle. I took my JKU up it, and as I hit that rock, the guys noticed that one of my rear tires wasn’t spinning, despite having my rear locker on. This killed all forward momentum, and after a couple of tries, I took the safe bet and winched past that section. Once I was past it, I was able to crawl the rest of the way. Upon investiation at home, I found there was junk in the plug on the diff to my rear locker, i cleaned it out, and the locker started working again.

After I got up, Viran gave it a go, but without a winch, he had to back down, which is precarious on it’s own! Luckily, Marco was able to make it up in his monster Tacoma! I’m gonna have to have a rematch with this one!

After that, we made our way to another neat section with a similar climb, but like the other one, a smooth rock as you went up, that had gotten pretty slick, caused us a little heartburn. I managed to crawl up with just my front locker working, as did Marco and Viran with some enthusiastic throttle application. Michael and Matt needed a quick short winch to get the front over so they could make their way up. Right as Marco started to climb, the rain started to come down, so he did the climb in hard mode!

After that, we decided to start heading back to camp, as we’ve had some good fun for the day, gotten plenty of excitement, and the trails were getting pretty slick. Also, the route out meant some tight, narrow shelf roads with steep dropoffs and tight turns, so the slicked clay on the trails was not inspiring a lot of confidence given the rain. So after some nervous moments, we made it back to camp, headed into town for dinner to support the local economy, and laughed off the shenanigans of the day around the fire.