Photos by Jim Brightly

Horse Thief line on the left and Devil’s Hole on the right. Each trail boss held a pre-run drivers meeting.

If you live in the Southwestern tri-state area (Arizona, California and Nevada), and want to cool down next summer while enjoying some of the hottest trails in Southern California, mark June 18-20, 2010, on your calendar in bright red ink. Trust me, you will not want to miss this fantastic event in the San Bernardino National Forest. And regardless of your driving ability or your vehicle’s state of modification, you will find at least two trails—one for each day—to suit your requirements.

Since the Inland Empire Four Wheelers, in conjunction with the USFS, limit the total registrations to 250—not including club members and vendors, which brought the total registration up to 317 (club members even pay full freight)—you’ll also want to keep an eye on the club’s website (www.ie4w.com) so you can get your registration in as soon as they open up the list (which typically happens in either January or February each year). By the way, the dates above are tentative at this time and may change at a later time, but marking your calendar now will still serve to remind you.

Having driven the John Bull Trail—one of the included trails on all three days—five or six years ago, Saraine and I talked our friends, Paul Schupp and Jamie Nylander, into driving over from Arizona with us. When we registered, we barely slipped in just under the wire, as there were only two registrations left open, and we were even able to include the trails we wanted in our registration! We reserved Horse Thief Flats for Saturday and John Bull on Sunday (Horse Thief is rated as moderate and John Bull as extreme—in fact, its nickname is “Mini-Rubicon” because it’s so similar to the Rubicon Trail).

Even though Horse Thief was rated as moderate, big tires and lifts were the norm on this trail.

Speaking of the registration, I want to take this opportunity to say that many other clubs, several state associations, quite a few restaurants, and more than a few federal bureaucracies could take a lesson in efficiency and friendliness from the Inland Empire club. When we received our event packet, it included among other things a laminated card with a picture of the trail boss for each of our two reserved trails. This made it so easy to find our assembly line each morning. The included four-color dash plaque is the most attractive dash plaque I’ve ever received in four decades of four wheeling. The packet also included my purple T-shirt, raffle tickets, our pre-paid dinner tickets, a burlap bag for trash, vendor brochures, and an antenna flag.

The farther down the trail we went, the grades grew steeper and the rocks grew higher.

And chew on this bit of information: the IE4W club (using only club family members) served approximately 800 dinners in just over 45 minutes. Opening the chow lines at 6 p.m. on the button, the chefs were announcing “seconds” were available before 7 p.m. Dinner included excellent barbequed tri-tip and/or chicken, a delicious hot three-bean dish, Caesar salad, drinks, rolls, and cake and ice cream (kids’ dinners were a hot dog, chips, fruit, drinks, and of course cake and ice cream). But it wasn’t just the efficiency of the chow lines that impressed us, it was the entire event—everything from checking into the campground to traveling the trails went off without a hitch in its gitty-up. And all this was accomplished with just 60 members—and the smiles never left their faces. (I asked about that and was told that all 60 members are active—they must attend 50 percent of meetings and 50 percent of the trail runs each year, with two of the trail runs being overnighters. And the club spends about six months on and off on the BBFF each year to make sure it does come off without a hitch.)

Friday had two nighttime runs in John Bull and Gold Mountain. Saturday hosted 12 runs; two John Bull, two Dishpan Springs, Onyx Summit, Pilot Rock, White Mountain, Gold Mountain, Devil’s Hole, Horse Thief Flats, and a Historical Run. Sunday, since the Snow Valley Ski Resort’s gates had to be locked up tight by 5 p.m., saw the lineups for only four rides; John Bull, Horse Thief Flats, Gold Mountain, and Onyx Summit. The nicely designed glossy BBFF program contained all the information an attendee could want or need.

But now let’s hitch up our seatbelts and head out. As I said earlier, our Saturday trail was Horse Thief Flats. It involved a long over-the-pavement drive to the trailhead (which reminds me, make sure your fuel tank is full each morning) before we lined up to let our hair and air down. As we headed down the trail to the flats from Highway 18, the area started to look more and more familiar to me. This was not surprising since I grew up in So Cal and my wife and I had wheeled around So Cal for more than 30 years before moving to Arizona.

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The chefs called for seconds only 45 minutes after opening the chow lines—after 800 diners had flowed past their serving areas.

What was surprising was that I remembered just when I had driven that trail before—December 1968! True story: On a Wednesday in December 1968 (I can’t remember the actual date) I traded in my 1946 Jeep CJ2a for a 1967 Bronco—even without car seats, our third child in September meant the Jeep’s backseat was too small for three kids—with only 6,000 miles on the clock (it still had 44,000 miles on its warranty). I believe I paid $2,300 and it was “uncut,” unraised, and still had the stock tires on it. I mention this because on the following Saturday, Rudy Hindelang and I wanted to try it out on a trail in the San Bernardino mountains, hopefully with some snow involved. We found a likely dirt road off Highway 18, north of the lake and near the city dump, and turned east. We simply followed tire tracks and discovered a narrow, interesting trail down the side of the mountain.

On the flats at the base of the trail—I believe Louis L’Amour used to call it “a hanging meadow”—we found two ancient one-room cabins facing each other across a small yard; one a frame-and-slat wood cabin and the other a stone cabin with a large fireplace. There was even some rickety furniture, a deck of cards, and some really old, peeling tin cans on some milk crate shelving. Leaving everything as it was—unfortunately, neither of us had thought to bring a camera—we headed back up the trail. Within the first half mile I was negotiating a steep rock slide when the left front tire slipped off a rock and huge crunch was heard. Struggling to open the driver’s door, I discovered I’d really clobbered the Bronco’s rocker panel beneath the door and I also discovered the Bronco was stuck! It was high-centered and its teeny tires couldn’t get a grip on the rocks. It was so cold our hands were freezing to the metal, and we weren’t dressed for the cold since this was a spur-of-the-moment trip, and it was getting close to sundown, when it would really get cold!

My first thought was an all-white Bronco was not going to show up well on snow-covered rocks; my second thought was the wooden cabin would keep us warm in the rock cabin until morning if we burned it in the fireplace.Rudy was more efficient—he grabbed the Ford screwjack and jack handle (this was before Hi-Lift jacks) from under the hood and we began digging and jacking and road-building until we finally got the Bronco free. All I had to do later was try and explain how I had put that great big bang in our brand-new Bronco. Rudy and I tried many, many times in the years that followed to find that trail but were never successful, and here it was, our Saturday trail.

At the end of our Saturday trail, we met the end of John Bull. This was when we decided not to take a chance on the possibility of damaging the JK, so we did not take the John Bull on Sunday (we’ll return another day and take it with our CJ, which is better set up for the difficult and technical trails).

Again, I suggest any club in the tri-state area that is planning an event should avail themselves of the IE4W experience. Attend Big Bear Forest Fest XIII, talk with IE4W members, learn if they had any pitfalls in the past that you could avoid, and take their advice! This is a great club and a great event. Not to mention that the San Bernardino National Forest is beautiful and its trails are challenging.