it all started with a want to get out pedallin again.. talked wheelin with some mates then an invite was thrown my way.. "reefton and maybe the chasm?" they said. oh it was awn!
friday arvo, all fuelled up and away.. arrive in reefton with the disco inferno and the fawdy, jase in his 60 with his colonel on the back to meet up with kbjj settin up camp round his nissan d21 mutation.. couple more mates turn up later that night to finish the crowd..
at camp..
set up camp and then sure enough, true to weather predictions it rains overnight reasonably heavily and constantly.
awaken in the morning to a slight light smattering of rain but to be honest, its nothing compared to the weather report had been predicting for the whole weekend. rain on rain. glee me thinks! a quick but relaxing breakfast and off into the business part of the trip.. slab hut creek and a couple of other local tracks around there to 'bed our trucks in'..
luckily for us this was the plan, pre chasm, for as we enter one of the tracks, one chap drives possibly a maximum of 40 metres into the track and snaps off all his wheel studs on a front wheel..
managed to winch him out of the way after tryin to strop a large log under his front leaf to lift said broken corner.. he told us to leave him there as another mate went to drop him off to his tow vehicle for him to source replacement parts and we continued on our way..later along the trip the time came to use my lockers and as i switched the rear on, i heard air leaking and my pump kept pumpin.. not cool. upon closer inspection i found that when i had my panhard issue from an earlier trip, my body had moved in relation to the front diff and pinched my rear lockers airline.
with a bit of thinkin i thought about a larger airline to sleeve it, trim the line nicely and superglue together. luckily this got my rear locker goin again. much woot ensued. pic'd below..
aside from springing a power steerin cooler leak and having to bypass that and refill the reservoir, all was back to goodly. even the westcoast sun came out to play and things soon got toasty.
with a few more hours of wheelin under our belts that day we headed back to camp at around 5 to prepare for the next day. the chasm. back at camp we met back up with the unfortunate chap from earlier with the snap and go front studs. he had to travel to greymouth to be able to get some studs to suit the repairs, had done so and was now mobile again. well done that man.
we had decided a reasonably early start was best so we were up at 6 to cook a decent breakfast then off to the chasm entrance.. twas another awesome day weather wise.. as we entered the chasm there were weka running around and being sooo tame its not funny. wicked.. anyhoo, we headed on in and enjoyed the massive wash outs and shail and rockyness of the territory.. i must admit i never got any footage bar the one pic my daughter got of the fawdy parked at the bottom of the chasm and another at the exit..
like i've said before though, i was too busy drivin. others hopefully have. as we went down into the chasm it was the unfortunate luck of the guy that did his studs from the earlier day to snap a cv on the way down.. later goin through the twin boggy exit of the chasm section he blew another.. fixed that one also.. out of the 6 of us, some went the high road and some went the low road (those that have done the chasm will know what i mean..). we stopped just at the end of the bog section to have a bit of lunch and discuss the fun thus far. at this point a little weka jumped out of the bush and walked down the track where we had just been checkin out the freashly churned soil for food. was so humbling to be sharing that habitat and environment. good fun.heading downhill after the chasm was a lot of fun headin through some wooded areas and out onto a creek type washout where there was a lot of clay to trip some punters up.. i spotted a different line that i want to attempt next time i go back.. through more bush and there was plenty of tight twisty stuff combined with mud, tree roots, ruts, of camber and so much more. really the chasm is a special place.
the fawdy and the colonel..
after exiting the chasm, we got back to our tow vehicles and met up with the farmer that owned the land around there. truely good bloke that was rapt to hear we had a ball..
next day and it was a relaxed start as the weekend had flown by all too fast. a morning pedal was the go so we went off to do a track off the ridge of a track we had spotted on the saturday.. dropped into it with some good washouts of one rut and straddling till there was no option and into the rut and go styles. some good ole clay mudded gloop flingin as engines rev'd and wheels spun. through here kbjj decided to load up his now modded stronger transfer by riding his brakes to get the lsd workin and heard a terrible loud clap sound. cv. bein a rather shizenhouser place to change it he winched out till there was an area for which jase could get around him to tow him out as we were nearly all the way out.. typical huh? whilst winching out of the ruts to get around kbjj, jase's winch spooled slightly askew and having that pto grunt, snipped its wire rope when spoolin where it shouldnt have. dammit. lucky he had plenty on there and reeled out somemore and used kbjj's little wire clamp doohickey number. thats their name, no really..
we got around and out with no further hiccups..we headed back to camp with a smile on our dials and a hunger for wheelin satiated.
although.....
i feel a slight gnawing in my gut. i think i feel the hunger returning...
before a short winch
