Ok so, here's a small writeup on the run to Santa Flora/Mahawal.
Met up with a small crew that morning, just 8 vans this time. Waited for a couple stragglers and we were off by about 9:15Am towards Santa Flora.
Entered the Santa Flora trail in search of the Mahawal trail - none of us really knew where it was so we were on an exploration/scouting mission (hence the run's name!)
Found a couple side-roads that lead to nowhere, just some dead ends.
Eventually we got to the old logger's campsite that we were familiar with, having run through that area last March 2011 when we did our Santa Flora run.
We decided that the old trail we knew was too easy, so we went off on a second main trail that was supposed to lead towards Quinam Beach. We had been there before but had been stopped at a certain point where a tributary of the Mahawal river had eroded the trail too much to press on. We had heard that a new trail had been cut through, so we decided to try this trail again.
Our expedition didn't reach very far when we got to an innocent-looking mud-pit. We had crossed it before when it was dry, so we thought it would be a piece of cake again. Boy was I wrong.... i got through half of the pit ok, but towards the last section i seemed to have gotten hung up partly on a bank, and partly on a submerged & hidden log that wasn't tehre before. Took me a few tries, and some pulls on Imtiaz's Surf using a snatch strap to get me out, but I was out soon enough.
Next to try and brave the bog was Adil in the purple frontier - but alas, he too fell victim to the hidden obstacles in the deep slush pit. Imtiaz in the Surf and Jeremy in the hilux were able to make it through by staying on the right, riding the hard bank.
Our journey came to an end after the mud bog though.... unfortunately the river had passed through the trail and washed it out too badly for us to make it much further. To make matters worse, Jeremy's hilux was injured - apparently he had hit the slush a bit too hard, and the muck came up into the engine bay causing the clutch fan to shred itself to bits and gashing open the radiator in the process. After a short while of deliberation, it was decided by the group that we should tuck tail and limp home. We used Elvis's hilux to tow jeremy through most of the mud, as he had the best tyres and could pull him in lo-range gearing. After getting jeremy out, I had to fight again in the mud pit, got stuck temporarily on the same underwater log.
Luckily Imtiaz was still around to pull me out, using a snatch technique and heavy ARB snatch strap. After a few tugs, the big Navara was free and we limped back to the main road. Towed jeremy out of Santa Flora, through Fyzabad and San Fernando all the way back to the North.
So once again Side B was unable to hit water.... but we had loads of fun in some mud!! This is a usual thing for side B anyway, so we not diggin no horrors, only digging mud!!
keep On Truckin'!!
