This past weekend, some of the boys and I decided to go and run some trails about one and a half hours north of Toronto. For any curious Canadians, those places are just north of Orillia by Severn Falls.

I must apologize for the lack of pics of my Pathy in action, but I was taking most of pics.

So Friday night we camped out and after most people went to sleep at 2:30AM, Raff proposed that I go explore some local ATV trails with him. I have no idea how the hell I fit my Pathy in some of the spots... but it got very tight for both of our trucks. Obviously the Samurai had massive advantage in size, but he only got about 15 feet further than me.

This is what stopped our progress.







After backing out of the trail, me losing a mirror and getting some nice deep and sexy pin striping, we decided to play around on some rocks. At 4AM.



We hit the actual trail in the morning with five trucks. Three Nissans and two Zuks.



























Raff and his crazy Samurai always likes to climb EVERY GODDAMN ROCK on the way. Sometimes getting big time hung up or stuck. It's all good fun.















We tried to run a cool little trail we found on the map, but it turned to be a bit too much of a headache. We got to this bridge that was not even stable enough for the Sammi. Raff quickly declared that the bridge is a bypass, and the real way is down through the rocky roller coaster on the side.







We decided that it was too tight for the larger trucks to squeeze through with nothing more than minor damage, so the Zuk turned around and we headed back.

At that point some of us decided to call it a day, so we took a group picture and split up.



Then there were three. Since it was getting late in the day we decided to take a notoriously difficult and very moody trail to a beautiful campsite that we all like. Then continue in the morning and finish the trail. The trail had other ideas however.













We were actually making good progress until I made a bonehead move and tried a bad line to squeeze around a monster mud hole. Because it's all muddy clay and super slick, my truck slipped into the hole. I tried to run it through but it ended up with my truck nearly rolling onto the side. I backed up as much as I could but I got very very hung up on my rear diff.

My truck kept running for about a minute before the water got in, and made my engine computer (that's under the passenger seat) all confused by moisture.







I was winched back after some trying with a simple recovery strap, and I was on dry or I should say, slightly more dry ground. By the process of me being recovered, the other Pathy got hung up as well, so the little Zuk came to the rescue. With a snatch block he attempted to pull the green Pathy forward, but being so light, the Zuk itself got pulled forward and got wedged in a crazy little spot against trees and rear quarter panel of the Nissan.

We solved the problem with a manual come-along that kept the Zuk's ass from causing more body damage.







While that was taking place, I was taking apart my interior to get to the engine computer. Thank god that I did some form of water proofing as only two or three drops got in and it didn't fry itself to death.



While the computer was being dried out, we hooked up all three trucks an I got a nice tow in reverse back onto a more dry and accessible section of the trail. That was fun because I was in a dead truck, with no lights, power steering, power brakes, and I was being towed backwards through some pretty crazy shit at what seemed to be insane velocities.

When on dry land, we popped the ECU back in, removed the fuel pump relay to unflood the engine (it got soaked with gas when we tried to restart it originally) and the truck fired back to life.

That pretty much ended the day as we returned to a different campsite, and decided that it was enough for the weekend.

In the morning buddy with the green Pathy had to go home, but Raff and I decided to park my truck, get into the Sammi and run that cool trail with a wicked unstable bridge from the day before. Just to see how far we can get.

Again we took the "proper line" next to the bridge. Crossed the creek with no major issues, and we continued for about quarter of the mile until we got to gigantic beaver created swamp. There was no way anyone including a Unimog would have crossed it. Rather pissed off we had to turn around and head back.



Too much grip, too much "go" on the skinny pedal meant that Zuk snapped a rear u-joint at the drive shaft while trying to get back up the creek crossing.







We had to unbolt the drive shaft on the trail, and we got out in front wheel drive. Back where we left our daily trucks, we tried to fix up the damage and continue running trails, but the spare u-joint that we had didn't have the right bolt pattern. We tried to change that with some power tools, but lack of proper sized drill bits made it impossible to drill through that much metal. We had to call it a day this time for good.





Here is a bonus video of me trying to get out of a hole and getting my fender flares ripped off. I LOVE my fender flares so I was having none of it:

http://madmudders.net/runs/coldwater093005/MVI_4247.AVI

Also me doing stupid doughnuts in on a sandpit that we found:

http://madmudders.net/runs/coldwater093005/MVI_4245.AVI

Mud,rocks,stucks and carnage.Sounds like a killer weekend! Does the R50 Pathfinder have a custom rear bumper?Got any closeup pics of that?Just looking for ideas for a new bumper for my truck.Again,great pics and writeup!!

Luker does it again.

That mud bog looks NASTY!