I go wheeling with OCC on a regular basis, but I figured I'd start posting some of the info up here... at the worst, it'll give the Googlebot something else to chew on.
I met with 5 others in Manassas at 8:30am. One hopped in with me and we left a few minutes after 8:45 because another had to mess around with his dead CB for a bit before we left. ;) No parts fell off and we made it to the gas station on route 55, where we met up with the rest of the group. Top off gas, recycle some coffee, quick drivers meeting, we headed out.
This wasn't actually my ride to lead, but the OCC member that set it up had some issues with his CJ that we couldn't fix in time, so I'm filling in for him. Unfortunately, that means I didn't check anything because I thought he'd already taken care of it all. I found out the error of my ways when I pulled into the turnoff for Stateline/Tuscarora and was greeted by a huge steel bar across the entrance and a big sign that says "Road Closed". I radioed the rest of the group not to pull in and to find somewhere further up the road to pull over. I joined up with them after checking to make sure the gate was truly locked. Luckily two of the members said they knew of another trail in the area, so we put them in the lead and headed out to it.
We took a few turns on rural roads near Star Tannery and eventually got to the other trail. We stopped at the base of of a hill and waited for one member-to-be to air down a bit. The rest of us decided not to, as the ground was pretty much frozen solid and we didn't expect to be spinning any wheels. We then headed up the trail. The ride was relatively uneventful, but enjoyable. There were a few limbs that we had to scrape by, a few logs we had to negotiate and a fair amount of trail being held up by 20 foot retaining walls. It was a bit tight at times, but no one had any issues, with the exception of one TJ, which lost a CB antenna somewhere.
We stopped on the back side of the hill for lunch and a bunch of us decided to go find a Geocache that was in the area. I'd been somewhat insistent on that, as it's the main reason my passenger decided to join me in the first place and I didn't want the day to be a total bust for him (I wanted to find it too). We ended up climbing 200 ft higher via a pretty rocky and steep area where the powerlines run over the mountain (the same power lines that eventually cross Stateline) and found the geocache at the top. We did some swapping of stuff and my passenger got a very nice Jeep compass (N/S type of compass, not the Compass vehicle) that had been left by the cache owner. We left a travelbug, and took some pictures at the summit. We were only the second people to find the cache, which was kind of cool.
We then headed back to the rigs to eat. That's when my passenger started dropping rocks on my Jeep and decided to lay down in the dirt for a bit. ;)
We headed down the trail, passed a new housing development (which means trail access may be impacted when they're done) and headed into Mt. Olive. We eventually found Love's truck stop, where we all decided that we were done and would head home.
The trail (OCC members will know which one I'm referring to) is an easy trail, but it's a bit tight and a full-sized truck would probably leave some paint behind if they attempted it. Otherwise, it's about the same kind of difficulty as Peter's Mill. A bit less rocky and bumpy, but a lot tighter. There is no room for error... if you do something silly and manage to slide off the trail, you're pretty much done and everyone else would have to drive down to the next switchback to pick up the pieces. Of course, you'd have to be doing something really "not smart" to get in that much trouble in the first place.
All in all, it was a good day, even though we didn't end up running Stateline. I'm glad we were able to at least salvage a ride and not have to drive down to Harrisburg or something. Pictures may or may not follow... I completely forgot and I don't think anyone else took many, other than from the top of the hill when we were Geocaching.
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