Saturday morning started out as a beautiful spring day in Reno. I had asked people to arrive by 9 am and we would depart by 9:30. I arrived shortly after 8:30 and most of our group was already there and everyone but one or two was ready by 9. We had a short drivers meeting and by 9:30 we were off for the trail. I was leading with Steve as my second in line and Eric bringing up drag. I asked Eric to take drag since he knows the trail and area well so I thought. He too got lost after we turned onto McCarran but caught up to the group as the last of them were hitting the dirt.  

We were only a few hundred yards into the trail when we spotted our first heard of 8 Mustangs.  The conditions of the trail were perfect just dry enough that we did not have any mud but still wet enough that there was very little dust. The wild flowers were in full bloom as well. This is my 6th year on this trail and I don’t remember ever seeing this much grass and wild flowers on and around the road, it was a perfect time to be there with this years winter. We continued up to the first Reno lookout to take a birds eye view of the city below. Then we headed back to our rigs for the climb towards the top of the first mountain peak. When we got to the top Jack let us know that he was overheating in the big Ford. That truck was built for racing while towing rigs not rock crawling, right Shane? (Fall Rubicon 2008). It was a good place for our group to regroup prior to the long downhill and the big off camber left turn. We continued down the mountain toward the hill climb that takes us to the valley where we have often had lunch in the past. At the bottom of the hill climb we split into two groups, some went up the big hill climb behind me while the others were led around the mountain by Ken Sparks, thanks Ken for bringing them around. We regrouped in the valley at about 11:15 we didn’t see any horses so we decided to keep going before we stopped for lunch. We traveled a short distance to the dry lakebed and saw 3 herds of horses one of them had about 20 horses. So we stopped for about and hour and had lunch. We headed onward after lunch a about a half of a mile or so from the lake bed I heard little puffs of air coming from my front left tire. I stopped to let the group catch up and to fill my tire. As I was filling it up Doug took a look underneath on the inner sidewall and noticed a small slice in the sidewall. It wasn’t leaking that bad so I continued to drive on it know the tire was not repairable I didn’t really care about it.  

Around 2:30 we were back on pavement and airing up. I headed back to Reno but most of the group headed into Virginia City.

It was another great Wild Mustang Run and for those of you who didn’t make it this year you missed out!! 

Ken

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.2