Completed: Truckhaven Hills, CA

[The Roadie]

Waiting by the side of route S22 outside Borrego for the tow truck to drag Greg and his busted upper control arm back to my house where I have the spare I should have been carrying.

Pics later.

It let loose on pavement after some big hits on the trail. Inconceivable good fortune for a bad situation.

[Zero]

safe travels friends.

[Trail X]

Ouchies! The upper control arm fractured? or did the UBJ let go?

Glad yall are safe!

[fishsticks]

Ouch.

Body damage?

[TangoBravo]

Man that really sucks, best wishes.

[djthumper]

I hope everything went smoothly on the recovery.

[The Roadie]

Back to my house by 10PM. Repair completed 10:10-10:40. Greg confirms he got home to his house (maybe 25 miles south) and it drove OK. He's on a family mission today - probably no time for him to post. I've got lots of pics and videos anyway.

First off - the failure was in the cast (or forged) part of the ball joint mount. Not sure if his former habit of driving on ocean beached contributed to the problem, or if previous strut experiments caused ball joint jamming and accompanying cracks to the mount. Anyway, they were OEM and very old (2002) UCAs. He has closeups of the grain structure for the metallurgists.

Two huge bullets we dodged by it finally letting loose on pavement:

Any distance off pavement and we would have had to leave it there and drive 2 hours to my house to get the spares or a welder. AAA only works if you're on pavement. (Yeah AAA Premier! 200 miles free!) Turns out that might have been faster anyway. And if I had only decided to bring along the UCAs I had in spares, it would have been a half-hour inconvenience on the trail. Ahhh, hindsight.

BUT, we were on a lot of dead end trails, and if anybody fails on a narrow section with no bypass, the far truck isn't going to get by go get help. Ick. Yet another worry.

Plus the minor safety issue of losing steering control on a knife-edge ridge trail or 45 degree downslope.

First the carnage:









Flatbed took about 4 hours to arrive. We were pretty far from the dispatched station.

Airing up. We had plenty of time waiting for the flatbed, so we just used compressors for free instead of my Powertank that takes only 30 seconds a tire, but costs $1 per.

[The Roadie]

The plan was to explore for the first time a section of BLM land to the northeast of the main part of Anza Borrego Desert State Park, called the Truckhaven Hills, Freeman Property.

Sunrise on my descent into the valley









Waiting for Greg to arrive:





It's mostly his trip plan, so I'll follow him to the entrance, about 15 miles east of Borrego Springs











Map of the vicinity. Mostly all east-west washes with dried mud badlands in between. Very few north south trails connect the main washes, and they're almost all unofficial and unmarked and most are at the limits of what we can handle. Many knife-edge ridges. Lots of cul-de-sac humpy lumpy playgrounds for ATVs and bikes. We saw a few bikes, 4-5 Jeeps, and two quads all day. One quad was ridden by a woman with a bloody eyebrow area and no helmet. Her riding partner was carrying her helmet. But they seemed to be making good progress toward pavement so we didn't insist they stop and get first aid from my med kit.



In we go:

[The Roadie]

Start of a narrow ridge











I'm gonna check this out first, he says























We were actually denied this hill. Took the bypass to the left after a butt-puckering back down

[The Roadie]

Would you believe we're aiming to get to the top of that far plateau, 7-8 miles away? Not this way, we're not.









Steepest descent EVER. No way to get back up it without winching. Had to make sure we could escape from the bottom.

[The Roadie]

Can you spot yourself through a squeeze with 1" clearance to the sandstone? Oh, this was in REVERSE, after the canyon dead ended with no room to turn around.





Greg took the harder line, and turned into a teeter-totter for a reward. 60 seconds for a tug - on the road again.



Narrowest, nastiest, off-camber section with sidewall puncturing hazards on both sides. THIS is where rock sliders are not an optional part of your kit. They're mandatory. This got much worse in a hundred yards, but we were able to turn around and go through without major spotting. Videos will be up later today after I do some honey-do chores.

















That's it for my pics. Videos and Greg's pics later.

[Mooseknuckle]

That is awesome.Looks like a lot of fun. Great pictures Roadie

[Jon A]

Ouch. I'm glad you guys made it out OK. This may be the most visual arguement we've seen in favor of flipping the UCA's.

[Trail X]

Looks like it failed in the best possible way! I was expecting the tire to be folded under.

Looks like a really technical area - can't wait for the videos.

[Blackout]

This is why I'd love to be on the west coast. I love being out in that type of terrain. Looks like a lot of fun, and great pics

[DJones]

That's some nice scenery that I don't get to see all the time. The suspense built through the entire thread until I started seeing some decent-sized rocks.

I knew I should have kept the old control arms for an emergency...

[The Roadie]

First of many dashcam videos:

[dirty anton]

great stuff!!

[Trail X]

Watch out for the launching Envoy TEEBES!

Nice video, looks like some serious trails.

[The Roadie]

Good news about UCA spares is that you only need to carry one. JD and MB - Teebes has a good closeup of the break grain structure. Need expert commentary on if it was possibly salt corrosion cracking or perhaps overextension and upper ball joint jamming that cracked it.

Very odd that it survived all that time and let loose on the road.

I thought I had a suspension problem at a burger joint we had lunch at, so I laid down on the ground to look. In 30 seconds, three people came boiling out of the restaurant to see if I had fallen or something worse. Good to know they cared......