Writeup delivered:
Matt and I left town around 10:30 with 2 other local rigs. We had a guy running late so we decided to drive up to the waterfall and play around untill he caught up. It had just rained the day before so that waterfall was pretty slick. Matt finally caught the right line after trying and crawled up. I had to take a "little" different approach. 4.10's and 38s=alot of Petro. After trying a few different lines, I kept getting heavier on the gas. Probably should have pulled cable and kept riding, but we had a video camera so whats a guy to do
?? Ended up breaking a YJ main in half. Winched up, all was good.
About this time Braden caught up with us in his xj. He pulled up to the bottom of the waterfall and somehow broke a longside 30 shaft. He backed up to inspect the damage, and immediately backed into a tree that took out his driver's side rear glass! He pulled forward and got wedged on a rock sitting at the bottom of the fall. We decided to try and winch him up but......that didn't work as planned. Ended up having to regroup and try and move the rig backwards away from the waterfall.
About a minute later, he tried to move the rig under its own power, and the Passy side knuckle completely ripped of the inner C. So, after much laughter we tried the "log sled" trick but it didn't prove to be successful. With daylight running out we decided to hook up the winches and drag him off the trail. In doing this we broke the other rear window, the short side shaft, and politely persuaded the passenger side of his jeep along some rocks. Minutes later the exhaust got ripped off and on and on the carnage went. Ended up leaving the rig and calling it a night.
Carnage list as follows:
Matt--winch cable snapped in half (5/16)
Austin--Broken YJ main, destroyed roller fairlead
Chris--Smashed running boards on virgin 4runner
Braden--Both 30 shafts, both rear windows, knuckle ripped off, upper and lower balljoints, housing probably trashed, exhaust destroyed, body very mangled etc. etc.
All of this happened within the first hour we got there