As you start the ascent up the trail, it'll get a little bumpy & challenging, just enough to make it fun dodging rocks & trees.

Once you reach what's called the Rock Garden, it gets a little tricky. To minimize the risk of body damage, a spotter is necessary. There is No bypass for this.

It's a tight squeeze for a full size rig but doable. You have to turn right, then left, then right again to dodge the boulders. As you can see from the pic above, Ryan made it through in normal fashion. Once everyone was spotted through the rock garden, we continued on. At the top of the hill, there's a fork & a sign "Chinamans Loop" with an arrow indicating the direction. Turn left & follow the trail. There are some hills but nothing difficult.

Once you reach a 3 way fork, turn right & follow the trail which is actually a dry creek bed. There's some rocks to drive over so be aware. About a 1/2 mile, there is a nice rock obsticale to play on if you so desire............We desired to play for a while. This can be bypassed. Digger & Rockhopper had some fun playing around as you can see in the pics below.

Once we left the rock playground, we continued on towards "Whale Rock". This obsticale has three ways of going up it. To the very left is "extreme" (almost straight up). In the middle is "difficult". On the right is "easy". Becker69 trook his Sportrac up the easy way in the pic below. Clearance is need for the other two ways.

Here's Bloodbane, Ron, & RNR having some fun on the middle section.

After everyone made it up Whale Rock, we took our lunch break. After filling our bellies, we continued onward. This part of the trail is mostly up hill with small to semi-large rocks to drive over. At the top of the hill, we came to what is called the "Stair Stepper". This has a bypass around it. It consists of several rock ledges. Ground clearance is required for this one. It can be a driveshaft eater so a spotter is helpful. Here's Bloodbane on the stair stepper & Rockhopper after he cleared the Stair Stepper. On top of it, there's some other rocks to carefully drive over.

After we had our fun on the Stair Stepper, we headed for the next obsticale called the Squeeze. It's a steep hill with a rock ledge on your right & a boulder on the left. In the middle, it has very deep holes that can eat your driveshaft & diffs so the trick is to ride the rock ledge on the right to keep your diffs & driveshaft out of harms way while keeping the body of your rig away from the boulder. I went a little too high on the ledge & it got a little too tippy for my taste so I backed down & tried a different line.

Once everyone cleared the Squeeze, the next obsticale is a dowhill, off camber, "S" turn. Just about everyone did some "3 Wheelin' Action" here. We were standing on bumpers to try & keep the rigs from getting too tippy. After you're out of the "S" turn, there's another off camber downhill rocky (very bumpy) section.

It's all downhill for us from here to the 3 way fork. This is where the actual loop meets up again. Now we start on the part of the trail which we already ran. This is another fun part...............We get to run through the "Rock Garden" again so get ready spot.

All in all, everyone enjoyed the run. Nobody suffered major damage but there were a few body dings & reworking of step bars. It was a great run with a great group of people.