Feb. 23, 2008 - The secret to achieving full four-by-four fun includes the ability to blythely ignore the possibility that the weatherman might be partially right, and then, when presented with evidence that he was right-plus, proceed anyway.

"It's just a light shower. See, even the wild burros are still out. No problem!"

So it was yesterday, when me, three friends and two jeeps all decided (yes, the vehicles DO have a say) to continue up the "backroad" from Lake Pleasant to Crown King despite the rain-with-light-snow-above-5500 ft. forecast. After all, there was just a gentle mist falling at the bottom and Crown King (elevation 6000 ft.) is only 500 ft. above the predicted snow level, and the rocks weren't too bad last year when we did this trail.

"It's just a little snow. No problem!"

"It won't get any worse than this, right?"

Well, as the gentle mist turned white and fluffy, it became obvious that the National Weather Service might have OVERestimated the elevation at which the snow started and UNDERestimated the amount that would fall. Now, that NEVER happens, right? It also became quickly obvious that a series of nasty winter rains had washed around and undercut the multitude of sizable rocks in the trail and sculpted previously "difficult" sections into lovely dragon's teeth tank traps. And now, the whole gas tank puncturing collection was wonderfully camoflaged under a fresh blanket of slippy, slidey frozen white. Did we turn back? HELL NO! Besides, by this point there wasn't any place to do that anyway.

Now, Ryan and Karen C.'s HIGHLY MODIFIED Jeep rock crawler had no real issues. On the other hand, my STOCK (including tires) '07 4-door JK, was having just the tiniest, ever-so-slight clearance and traction challenges (as in, "Oh, bad-word, what the worse-word did we hit this time!?" Or, "That didn't sound real good, did it?")

My right-side navigator and old hand in rough places, Jeff Lee, after building the fifth or sxth rock-ramp over the impassibles, developed an increasingly distressing (and invariably wrong) post-obstacle analysis: "Well, I think we're through the worst of it now." "Shut UP! You're cursing the hell out of us!" was my increasingly friendly response.

It got worse.

But five hours after negotiating what I had confidently predicted would take "two hours, two and a half, tops!" we emerged onto the rim of the southern Bradshaws unscathed (except for one my sidesteps), undaunted, and full of that feeling of more powerful manhood (except Karen, who was feeling full of more powerful womanhood or maybe just disgust at our vigorous chest pounding, I couldn't tell).

Karen, Ryan and Jeff in Crown King, glad they didn't have to walk up.

A quick visit to Crown King and very late lunch at Mike and Sam's wonderful The Mill and we were headed back down the easy way to I-17 and home, unfortunately aware that we were bound to do something stupid like this again.