Belthorpe Nat park run - Sunday 22nd march
I went through here about a year ao and was one of the best drives i'd done in a very long time - even saw some wild dear in the forrested sections.
If it's hot we might get a quick swim in along the way.
Depending on the length of the trip and who is up for it, we may choose to split off from the group and return home out via Jimna or the Kenilworth road.
Belthorpe trip review (pics)
SO, some of you know what happened pn the trip but here is a brief rundown.
Trip started well, lots and lots of pajero's met up at woodford and headed off into the forest. It had rained the night before and the forest was damp and misty.
We headed down the advanced 4x4 tracks, many resulting in a controlled slide into the bottom of the hill before slipping and spinning back up the other side. Creeks were flowing well and the river crossings were great, approx 1' deep.
After a lunch stop we headed on down the beacon track - an exposed and steep decent / asent of a ridge line. going down was good - rocky sandy ground and very steep tracks with lots of rear wheels in the air. Thick grass in the valley gave us all a good brush down underneath and we made short work of the first climb back up again.
then the storm rolled through with 10 minutes of drenching rain and wind.
Mid way up the climb out the track forked. ahead was a very steep climb that was now wet and loose - it would be touch and go if you would make it up in one go or not and winching was likely, to the side an advanced drack headed down again into the next valley down 90m of slippery red clay and muck.
Quick decision by the group saw us belly-sliding with no hope of return down the clay track and down into the next valley - through the valley it was overgrown and had not seen much activity - at the far end we were met by a hill climb easily twice as hard as the previous one with zero hope of anything but a ball-tearing hero-throttle escape.
One of the newer full size pajero's made it out at full noise and many of the gen 2 and gen 3 had no hope beyond the first few meters. After a few hours we knew that the io and other vehciles would likely roll on the climb so we turned around and attempted to re-trace our steps.
"monstabishi" a 3L supercharged gen 2 with a solid front axle conversion hit the clay and made it all bar 20m from the top. We winched it to the top and turned it around - lashed it to a tree and started winching the 5 remaining pajero's back up.
winching started at about 2:30PM - all five trucks (an io, a gen 1 shorty, two gen 2's and a gen 3) we had all vehicles at the top by 7pm, the winch rope was destroyed and monstabishi was almost out of fuel and being jumper charged to keep it's battery alive.
Quick escape back down into the previous valley and out through a farmers lane - home by midnight.
lessons learnt;
1) don't go down something you cannot get back up
2) if you don't like something - don't do it
3) use a bridle spreader strap with io's (or any vehicle) when winching - both gen 2's tipped over badly near rolling due to the offset winch point on the drivers side only.
4) get a good winch and lots of winch extensions that are about 1-2m shorter than your winch rope to allow easy multi-stage winching
winching
by the time we resigned ourselves to needing to winch out it was getting rainy again and everyone just wanted to get the fuck out.
winch setup was interesting, winch rope into a winch extension strap then a big D in between each additional extension strap - allowed you to winch in, then just run the rope and hook out to the next shackle and hook on and winch in - gave you almost full draw on the winch each time and was fairly fast.
the rock-crawling winch drum i'll fit to my io will only hold 16m of dynema so i'll be carrying lots of extension straps
Overall, I am happy just to
Overall, I am happy just to watch the pics... What a day/night!
It looks like it could be a great day out, if the weather was dry for few days...
Soon time to invest in a Wrinch I think.... just...................................................I have no idea how to use it hahahhhahahahahahah....
Belthorpe Trip 22nd march
Some photos from last time and from Belthorpe forest
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