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For
about 6 months now a fellow Right Coast
Crawler member, Bill, has been telling
me that he found some areas that we need
to check out because they could end up
being Nova Scotia's MOAB. I met Bill and
Rowland Spear at the Tim Horton's in
Halifax . Rowland was driving his new
black TJ. Bill has a highly modified
Cherokee, but recent setbacks (blown
locker, ailing motor) meant that he was
less capable than usual. Rowland's TJ is
basically stock, and my YJ is fairly
highly modified. Also on this trip with
us was my son, James. The initial part
of the trail is quite tight through the
bushes, going along an ATV trail. This
part of the trail requires extra
attention to not end up scraping the
trees, before dumping out onto what we
call the 'main' trail.
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By: Chad
Lloyd
http://www.rightcoastcrawler.com
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This
trail is the trail which leads from the
tight ATV trailhead
to the rocks at the destination, and is in
itself a nice trail. It
winds its way along a point of land, and
the views as you traverse
this part of the trail of the ocean and
beaches are quite
spectacular. The trail is very rocky,
although none of the rocks was
significant enough to hang me up. Rowland
in the stock TJ was having
a fun time, though. It was interesting to
watch him working that
puppy back and forth over the rocks, sea
sawing back and forth
across the trail looking for enough
clearance. In the end, he ended
up losing one of his side steps, but did
not seem too concerned
about it. |
We carried on along the trail, and
eventually got kind of strung
out. I heard Rowland say "I'm hung up
back here", so I
indicated to Bill that he needed help, and
bill attempted a multiple
point turn on the trail to go back and
help him. What's that hissing
sound? It's the air being let out of
Bill's tire! DOH! By the time
we got around to changing the tire,
Rowland had extricated himself
from his dilemna and caught up with us. We
carried on with Bill
using his spare.
Shortly after that we noticed a burned out
wreck along the trail.
Obviously some bonehead(s) had stolen this
vehicle, driven it into
the woods, flipped it over, and torched
it. As we got closer it
became obvious that it was a cherokee, and
as we got closer still
Bill said "That's a Dana 44 rear
end!". Out we all hopped
to inspect it and yes, lo and behold, it
WAS a Dana 44 XJ rear end.
This was kind of unique timing, given that
Bill had just blown the
EZ Locker in his rear end, and was going
through the old "do I
upgrade to a stronger axle or try to get
by with this D35c
junk?" routine.... he's also planning
on going to 33s, so when
you combine one blown tire (meaning he's
only got 3 31s left), and a
found D44, you get one upgrade from
D35c/31s to D44/33s, all at
once! Won't Bill's wife be happy to hear
about this?!!? We decided
to carry on to the end of the trail and
see how much of this junk
(including the rear end) we could carry
out on our way back - as
Bill pointed out "I don't appear to
be in much competition for
this rear end". So we carried on the
rest of the trail, which
included one creek crossing and more minor
rock crawling.
Eventually we ended up at our destination,
the shore of the
Atlantic ocean. Gorgeous views of nothing
but blue skies, crashing
waves, and rocks as far as the eye could
see. The rocks are huge in
areas, and nice and pristine - no
vegetation or moss - with massive
amounts of traction available. They run
the whole length of the
shore, extending quite far inshore. There
are miles and miles and
miles of these types of rocks here, and
one could easily play for
weeks in here without hitting the same
obstacle twice!
This trail was becoming more and more
useful all the time. The
trail getting to the rocks was fine in and
of itself, a nice little
run that ends in a stunning place to have
lunch. You could go home
at that point and be completely satisfied
with your spectacular day
of wheeling, but if you've got the time
and inclination, there was
miles and miles of rocks to play with, and
you could play as hard or
as easy as you liked. The ATV guys were
hitting this spot, but we
basically appear to be the only rock
crawlers in Nova Scotia, so the
rocks were uncharted.
As this was the first time we had ever
been here, we decided to
do only a small foray into the rocks and
return to map out a usable
(low impact) trail at a later date. So I
slowly crawled my way onto
the shore so we could have lunch.
After a little time spent eating our
lunches and admiring the
incredible beauty of the area, we packed
up a bunch of garbage left
by hikers and sunbathers, and I tried to
crawl my way off the rocks
and back onto the main trail. I promptly
got high centered on some
rocks. Some 8274 action promptly got me
out of there. The trail back
to the main road seemed to somehow have
gotten rougher, and we did a lot of
carriage scraping on the way. I got hung
up several times on my rear shock mounts -
going to have to relocate those!
Along the way we also picked up about 300
lbs of garbage from our
of the burned out Cherokee. There was no
way to get it out of there
except drag it out small piece by small
piece, hopefully it will all
be gone some day. The rear differential
ended up
being useful garbage, and is now happily
riding around in the back
of Bill's XJ with a Detroit locker, 4.56
gears, and a really cool
home made disk brake conversion Bill did
himself using Grand
Cherokee parts. Since that day we've been
back several times, mostly on foot, to map
out what we think is going to become one
of our premier trails. We have the
entrance almost worked out, and now we can
start mapping out trails through the
rocks. Hopefully we will
complete this process by the time summer
roles around so we can
spend the summer on the glorious shore of
the Atlantic ocean!
Chad Lloyd, January, 2001
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