The Jócar hillclimb… both ways!

The Jócar hillclimb… both ways!

Last Saturday we went back to Jócar in search for a little bit of adventure. At 10:00 sharp, I met Flyer (with his lipstick red G300TD), Splenda (with the unmentionable chinese) and Luisín, with his Ex-Kano 280 GE. Freyer is currently converting the K-Jetronic of his G300 to fully electronic and though the engine runs, a faulty lambda-probe is sending the wrong readings to the CPU and runs too rough to be taken for a spin. My G300D is in Tenerife so yet another day out without G!

The morning passed without anything worth mentioning… the track was fast but curiously dry and dusty or scattered with lake-sized potholes. We had a great time crossing these at speed…

However, and as any 280GE owner would attest, this engine is particularly allergic to water splashed on its top, due to the flooding of the spark-plug inserts which in turn make the engine stall. It happened to them three times that morning…

We proceeded close to Tamajón, where we encountered a nice little ford…

It was this guy’s first day out so he lacked the guts to tackle the obstacle downhill so he attempted it uphill instead....

Unfortunately, he chickened out in the last moment, frustrating his first and best attempt....

There were others… this one looked particularly nice:

Almost there...

At this point the guys of the 280 decide to go back home. The rest of the party decide to continue the fun. We head to Jócar and its indomitable hillclimb, but first we stop to have some sandwiches. Iberian pork chorizo and mussels in pickle with white tuna in olive oil, all conveniently wetted with a nice bottle of red Rioja…

On arrival to the Jócar hillclimb, we dismount “just to say hello to her”. However, and after due consideration that gravity was on our side, we decide to attempt taking it downhill. As Freyer put it: “Whatever we do, we will reach the bottom of Jócar!”

Flyer starts to drive down the extremely steep hill. Wheels lock and slide but somehow in a controlled manner. Then he faces the last challenge: a rocky step… he steps down to assess it and following my advice tackles the step: wonderful, slowly and softly without heavy braking or perilous balance and his ego coming out of the windows of his G.

A little later Splenda drives down to face the rocky step, while Flyer drives all the way down the hill following my advice to prevent playing billiard with his G in case the Galloper rolls down the hill.

Just before tackling the step we realize that due to the limited suspension travel of the Galloper and the fact that independent suspension does not keep ride height constant, the car is just about to roll. In fact, we noticed that the rear right wheel was “in the air” by about half a metre…

Worse still, the car was facing the rocky step just in front of its nose and we reckoned that if he were to cross it that would be just enough to topple the car over.

The car was dangerously balanced and any sharp movement would get it to roll down the hill.

Splenda is an almost total novice as far as off-road driving is concerned (it was only his second outing) and he did not seem to notice the predicament he was in. Freyer very quietly asked him to pull the handbrake in full, stop the engine with the first engaged and slowly get out of the car to “test the waters”. Once out of the car and quite relieved that Splenda is still alive, we all agree that the best course of action is to try to recover the Galloper from up the hill, pulling with Flyer’s G.

The only other alternative identified was to try to start the engine of the Galloper again and pointing the steering of the car straight down the hill try to violently accelerate and pray that everything would be fine.

The problem, however, is that we did not find anyone among us with the balls to be in the driving seat during such manoeuvre. So we decided to walk down the hill, which we did, only to find Flyer who had got badly stuck in the ford that transversally crosses the bottom of the hill. You see, Flyer is also relatively novice in these things and he chose the wrong point to cross the ford while we where distracted by Splenda’s predicament.

Good! Both cars in difficulties and nobody in miles around who could lend us a hand. It took us two and a half hours to disengage Flyier’s G from where it was, by extensive use of the hi-lift jack and the spare wheel as solid ground form where to obtain grip for the front left wheel.

It was not a t all easy, we could not get the diff locks to engage for what seemed like a long time. I took the wheel and after some front and back balancing, I managed to get the car unstuck.

There were a lot of cheers but we still needed to cross the very slippery match that we got stuck with Freyer’s and Flyer’s Gs last month (see here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mortinson3/Tamajon02) and then we had to hand-remove a tree that had fallen in the middle of the track. After a three-mile drive we were back at the top of the Jócar hillclimb, some fifty metres above where Splenda’s Galloper was still perilously standing.

First problem we had to face was the fact that the pulling straps we had totalled some 12 metres and this meant that we had to take the G downhill again (in this 45º greasy and slippery gradient), have it secured, strap the Galloper to the G, pull the Galloper uphill with the G driving backwards, have both vehicles turn in this very steep hill and then drive them both uphill. We even considered to attempt to borrow a long-enough steel cable that would enable us to pull the Galloper from the safety of the plain.

Finally and given that the sun was about to set, we decided to go for Plan A. After a lot of planning and attempting, we managed to rescue the Galloper first.

And then, after we took the G to safe grounds, Freyer managed to climb the hill with the Galloper (and this without diff locks!!!!!!)

A wonderful and exciting off-roading day!

All the pics are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mortinson3/Jocar