Offroad-Express

spent mot of the weekend playin in the mud at my dads farm in kaiwaka, bloody hell its soft and slippery now. Photos and vids to come soon.

Went for a bit of a play, got muddy, wet and stuck a few times. Got myself out a bit, needed a couple gentle snaches too.
Then went down river for spashdown washoff

Went for a bit of a skid around some more of the central nth island.

Started off leaving Hamilton at 12.30am friday night, arrived at camp No 1 at 2.30am. No pic's as it was wet and windy and one of the trucks had a crook sounding gearbox!!

When the sun came up, a quick look under truck with the noisy gearbox revealed a oil slick under it and a missing bolt from the rear housing which must have vibrated out.

A liter of ATF got it mobile and we limped it the half an hour back to meet the rescue trailer which had come down from Hamilton. We loaded the truck onto the trailer, put the trailer on the back of the Defender and set off for West Auckland. We swapped the dodgy truck for the good truck, turned around and drove back down to Hamilton, stayed the night there, then headed back down towards the center nth island the next day. That was a lot of hours behind the wheel!!!

Sunday the exploration got underway properly. I had an old DOC map from the late 80's, so was keen to see what was still open. All was going well untill we were faced with this:



On closer inspection, it was impressive!!!!



Not to be beaten, we found a way through which dropped us down onto the river bed at the far top left in the next photo:


Catch was it was raining, slippery, and if it turned out there was more weather damage further in it was going to be a definite winch to get back out (never looks as steep on camera ):


Lots of tracks everywhere, we were greatful for the GPS and maps, the potential to loose your sense of direction was huge!!!

Most of tracks were fine, but I didn't think to put the chain saw in, so quite a few tracks got marked and left to explore next time as they were blocked with fallen trees following the same weather that caused the wash out!!

Other times we just ran into this sort of thing:

No obvious reason to block the tracks like this, it was strange.

Monday we went up to a fire watch lookout, the forest was awesome in the low cloud!!




Then managed to find our way over to explore a small hydro power scheme. Lots of GPS and map navigating lead us to the various power houses, canals and lakes hidden deep in the forest:



This little dam hidden up in the hills was an awesome find, shame I only got crap photo's!!!





Good weekend, burned over 1000k's worth of Diesel and the Defender didn't miss a beat. Phew

Looks like a sweet trip DB, Cheers for the pics

that looks like a bloody awesome trip,will have to tag along some time when the trucks back on the road if im allowed,plenty of great nz scenary in there and the type of trips the mrs loves which i find hard to find sometimes

Was an awesome trip away , despite not being able to use the truck I wanted.
Tourqe wrench has been pulled out and I've started the process of checking every bolt I can find . Just proves how important it is to check you truck throughly before you take ot out.

Good old fashioned , cruzy , no stress off road exploring and camping. bring on the next one. LJs I reacon.

UBZ wrote:Was an awesome trip away , despite not being able to use the truck I wanted.
Tourqe wrench has been pulled out and I've started the process of checking every bolt I can find . Just proves how important it is to check you truck throughly before you take ot out.

Good old fashioned , cruzy , no stress off road exploring and camping. bring on the next one. LJs I reacon.

Next time give me a yell too. i love exploring !