Kenilworth TJM 4wd Weekend - Day 2

Sunday 8th February, 2015.
Up again fairly early this morning. We'll be doing the more "challenging" track drive today, so should be interesting.  Chris next door came over for a chat this morning while we were having our coffee.  Just simple cereal for brekkie and start packing some stuff away (we'll leave the camper off until we have done today's track).

Back over to the TJM tent around 9am for our track instructions for today and once again we lined up to get our vehicle numbers (a few less cars today as some people didn't want to damage their cars if the track was to challenging).

Day 2 Hema Cloud Map

Lined up & ready to move out!

So right from the start proved to be challenging for some when we were lined up in the muddy track awaiting our turn to ascend the first rather vertically steep looking hill. The guys in the car in front of us got bogged in a mud hole and we had to snatch them out backwards with little space to reverse before we would sink into the mud hole behind us - thankfully it all worked out well.

A muddy start to the day.

Look at the start of the first hill

The track in
(photo courtesy of XRay Vision)

It was taking a while to get all these cars up the first hill, especially with an epic rescue that occurred half way up the first hill.  

Stuck Landcruiser

A Landcruiser got a little sideways on little landing part of the way up the first section of the hill, nobody could come down to get him so they had to join about 6 snatch straps together and slowly pull him up the remainder of the hill. Once we got up the hill we realised they had very little room to manoeuvre a car around up here.

Back to our ascent up the first hill, holy mother of mountains it was steep, dropped away on both sides, loose rocks, gravel and wheel ruts.  Craig and the little Gaylux gave it their all and we bounced our way up to the top.  

We've collected some mud on the way in

Now we are one of four cars waiting on a small parcel of land to ascend the 2nd hill. You have to wait until you are called up by the car in front, as there just isn't room to park at the top of each section, or if you need assistance you don't want someone barrelling up the hill behind only to have them smack into the back of you - safety first.

The car in front going up the 2nd hill

Below is a video of our arrival at the top of the second hill (Craig was surprised to see someone at the top of the hill and took the wrong line, then we slide backwards for a bit until we finally stopped, I felt comforted when Craig said he'd lined the back of the tray up with a big tree in case he couldn't stop us from sliding....... !!!!!!!) Video courtesy of TJM Maroochydore

Reaching the top of Hill #2

When we got to the rather steep vertical type descents, poor Boris couldn't stay on the seat poor little bugger, he kept sliding down into my foot well unless I held onto him!

And the first downhill descent

Trying to show you the angle

A bit grubby

The mud was soooo icky!

Another descent

Hopefully you get the angle

Hopefully you get the angle we were at

Still going down

Convoy parked up in the forest

Back end of convoy

Having a break

While we were parked up having a break, Boris was having a fat time running up and down the length of the convoy saying hello to everyone and getting as many pats as he could.  However, there was one little girl from the car in front of us who was dying to give him a pat and cuddle and Boris the little shit kept looking at her and running past.  I called him over and told him to let the little girl pat him and this was the result:

Come over for a pat

Getting a little closer

And she got a very big cuddle from Boris

Us somewhere on the track
(photo courtesy of XRay Vision)

We got back to the showgrounds around 2-2.30pm and proceed to completely pack up and load the camper onto the track.  It was extremely hot and muggy by then, made it very uncomfortable for all of us.

We stopped and enjoyed the TJM sausage sizzle for lunch, thanked them for a great weekend, stopped off to chat to the other Travelander campers that were there (yep, we only saw it Sunday morning), then finally got on the road heading for home.

It was a cracker weekend, we met some new friends and had a really enjoyable time chatting with everyone with met and a great time driving the tracks that TJM Sunshine Coast organised for us.  We will join them on their future weekend events for sure (as long as they are dog friendly anyway). Hopefully we'll catch up with some of our new friends on one of them.
Below is a link to the XRay Vision video that they took of the weekend, if you are interested in watching it. It's about 13 mintues long.

XRay Vision video of the TJM Weekend