Greenwater, WA. Snow Run
Forest Service Road 70
(And the gravel pit off of FS 72)
Greenwater, WA. Snow Run
Forest Service Road 70
(And the gravel pit off of FS 72)
On Christmas break from Boeing, and
Jim and I needed
to get out of the city to some fresh chilled air and snow.
We had planned on getting up to Greenwater on Friday, but we saw that Garrett
had put up a thread on the forum to head up Saturday, and we obliged.
Greenwater has been getting some major snow dumps for the past several weeks, so
we thought it was time to go play.
Here is a list of those who attended:
Corey/2007 FJ Cruiser (duh, that be me)
Gabriul/2001 Tacoma
Mytruck/1984 truck (Jim)
Wiebs6/1993 truck (Garrett)
My Pictures
Jim's Sony is a DSC-V3.
I also resized his to 1200x900.
The quality of his are far greater than mine.
Pictures 4 and 5 are for Miss Molly
by golly, AKA Lysmachia on most Toyota forums ;)
Jim's pictures
Video
I shot a total of four
videos, and then stitched them together with Windows Movie Maker into one 12 MB
WMV file.
I signed up for You Tube at last, and the video is on their site now.
You can view it in the player on the page, or click the button there to watch it
full screen.
Click here for the video.
I will also try embedding it here to
see if it works.
Summery of
trip
After we got up to
Greenwater and turned off on FS Road 70, we played in the gravel pit for a bit.
Lots to do in there as always, weather it is summer and dusty in there, or
winter weather like today with lots of snow.
Got to use the winch on the FJ for the first time, and also used the Ramsey
Remote Control that I installed a few weeks back.
It use to be on the 4Runner, and is a nice addition since it is easier to use
than a corded remote.
You can see in the video the winch doing a small rescue ;)
Later as we headed back down to go further up 70, we heard some other Toyota
owners on the CB.
Turned out we knew them.
Shane had a full size truck towing his SAS'd 1986 Toyota truck.
The other member I can not remember his username, but his first name was Chris,
and he to is a member on YotaTech and WATTORA, Washington states TTORA chapter.
He had a blue SAS'd 2nd gen 4Runner.
Jim and I left to go play on some easier stuff while the rest all aired down and
left to go find some really deep snow.
Jim and I are both on the semi sick list, so we had not planned on staying up
there for more than a few hours.
We just wanted to get out of the city and let our rigs stretch their legs in
their natural environment.
The rigs did great in the snow, and the FJ Cruiser really impressed the heck out
of me in the snow.
I did not slide around one bit in it unless I goosed it and really tried to
slide.
Even got to put it in 4low trying out both the E locker and the A Trac system to
go up a obstacles in the snow that were off camber.
Could not have asked for better weather up there either.
The sun was out and very bright, and lots of fresh snow form earlier in the
week.
The average temperature up there was a cool 28 degrees.
With the new addition of my OME lift, ARB bumper, and winch, I am carrying a lot
more weight on the rig.
The rig handles a lot better on the windy highway leading from Enumclaw to
Greenwater since the suspension is tightened up, but still it handles like a top
heavy SUV on that particular road.
The FJ is a short wheelbase rig, tall, and that all adds upto a rig that you
have to be careful of your speed into turns up there.
I think with the Hi-Lift jack on the roof that makes the center of gravity
thrown off that much more, so I will be contacting Luke at FourTreks to see if
he has the modular rings big enough to go onto the front of the ARB bumper.
Carrying the Hi-Lift on the front of the ARB should make the rig a little more
stable in the turns on that highway.
That highway gets a lot of abuse, and is not level in many places.