The club was evolved in many
activities throughout the month of June. From various volunteer
efforts helping strangers or the community, to hosting the first Meet
and Greet in the 49th state. Events like these show that the club
is a highly active group of motivated individuals. But do not
think that the club has strayed from its original purpose, as a trail
run was still made every weekend, sometimes more than once during a
weekend. So take a few minutes to read through the short summaries
and view pictures of everything that has happened in the past four
weeks.
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| Group shot taken
Saturday at the First Annual Meet and Greet |
June 8: First Annual Alaska Four Wheelers
Drive Meet and Greet
After months of planning, scheduling, and
venturing into unknown logistical territory, the weekend for the Meet
and Greet arrived. I myself had had a long week getting my
two-week old purchase ready for the event. A club officer couldn't
show up without a vehicle after all. On Friday night I arrived at
5 Star to see that Kurt and Ryan
had already installed the 8.8, shocks, and drivelines. All that
was left was mounting up some 33" Armstrongs and bleeding the
brakes.
Late Friday night a caravan of myself, Kurt in his
camper truck, Beau, and MaCro
headed out of Eagle River, arriving at Coyote Lake Saturday morning to
find some of the others had already established a camp. Some
carbonated beverages were consumed around the campfire before turning in
for the night.
Saturday got interesting. Events were
scheduled to kick off at 11am. Roughly 25 vehicles were in
attendance. Without a set timeline, the 'events' portion became an
impromptu RTI competition, a line up of vehicles for a picture, a quick
lunch, and some afternoon trail runs. Ramp scores were estimated
as no one wanted to take the time to measure and crunch numbers, but
even so it was clear that Gary
Griffith was ramp king in his impressive CJ-7. A run was made
to Wishbone Lake for those looking for a mild trail, or at least a paint
friendly trail, lead by our Vice-president. Brentt led some others
up to Permanente to tackle the rock slide. Hopefully pictures and
more in-depth write-ups will be available in the near future of these
trail rides. *edit: Brentt has provided a write-up
with pictures of the trip to Permanente, and it can be found here.* Some went home Saturday night after the Permanente
run, others camped out for another night and headed back Sunday. I
heard the group who traveled from Fairbanks for the Meet and Greet ran a
trail on Sunday morning before making the long trek back.
Thanks to Brentt for organizing this thing.
To Nate and his wife for manning the
barbeque for Saturday's lunch. To Gary Griffith and his wife for hauling the RTI ramp out to the event
and back, and to Ed Angle for loaning the
ramp. To our president for purchasing food on the behalf of the
club, and to Matt Cross and Kurt of helping to carry the food and
condiments to the campsite. A thanks to Ryan and Brentt for acting
as trail bosses for Saturday's runs. And a big thanks to everyone else who
attended and had a good time. The general feeling was the everyone
appreciated the opportunity to get together with other four wheel drive enthusiasts,
and the club is already planning on doing another Meet and Greet next
spring. Click
here for more pictures. If you have pictures you could donate
to the photo gallery please email me at littlegiant@gci.net.
June 16: Vehicle Recovery
On June 15 a group of people had a rather
unfortunate accident on Church Road; while the club was making a trail
run to Purches Creek, a fullsize Bronco in the company of an Alaska
Extreme club member rolled several times. The following day,
Father's Day, a vehicle recovery was mounted. This was not a 'club
event', as its success was dependent on members from Last
Frontier Four Wheelers as well as other local fourwheelers. Brentt has put together a summary of the events he was able to witness,
as well as some pictures, and they can be found here.
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The club banner was
hung on the side of the AWAIC food booth as club members helped
serve assorted foods. |
June 22: AWAIC
On June 22nd members from the club gathered
together at the Town Square Park during the summer solstice festival to
help the Abused Women's Aid in Crisis (AWAIC)
organization run their food booth. Patty Williams, our PR representative, was the main organizer and point of contact with the
AWAIC for this volunteer effort. This winter, under the direction
of a few motivated individuals and many energetic members, the club
decided to take steps to make ourselves more well known in the
community's eyes, and specifically to be seen in the 'good light'.
Volunteering to help the AWAIC, a 25 year old organization committed to
helping women and children facing domestic violence find a fear-free
environment, was a commitment made by the club a few months prior.
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| Brentt's oldest
attempts to tame Scott's 'flame broiled' cooking with water. |
Unfortunately not as many attendees as originally
planned were able to make the event. But nonetheless, those who
could (and would) attend worked hard to fill the shoes of the 16 people
we were supposed to bring to the booth. Our shift started at
7:30pm (that is 1930 at -9GMT for you military personnel) which turned
out to be the busy time for the food booths. With the sun shining,
passersby smiling, and burgers sizzling my position could have been
enjoyable. Unfortunately, while I was flipping burgers onto the
ground, not keeping orders straight, and singeing my knuckles I was
out-right stressed. Things got better when Nate and Brentt arrived
bringing both extra manpower and light-hearted humor to the
situation. When things slowed down Brentt managed to scavenge some
bungee cords and hang up our new club banner on the side of the booth
facing the crowd. As it turned out the lettering on our banner was
substantially larger than any reference to the AWAIC, causing the booth
the appear to be the Alaska Extreme Fourwheelers food booth for three
hours.
A big thank you (in no particular order) to Peter,
Tim and his fiancé Jen, Nate,
Nick,
Matt Cross, Matt Lederhos,
and Jeremiah for showing up
and helping the club advertise itself to the public as a community and
action orientated organization. Click
here for more pictures.
June 27: Valley Street Park Clean-up
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| above: Curtis,
Dave A., Chris, and Matt C. pick up litter and clear brush. below:
Peter makes one of several passes necessary to clean the water
of litter |
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Just five days after our volunteer efforts for the
AWAIC, the club met at the Valley Street Park to pick up litter.
We met on a Thursday night at 7pm, the usual meeting time for a meeting,
but on an 'off week'. For many of the newer members this was the
first time they saw the park. The club began cleaning up the park
last summer as part of the Parks and Recreation Adopt-a-Park program.
Unlike the last clean-up effort, the attendance
was excellent. I was unable to get an accurate head count, but at
least 15 club members showed up and put in one and half hours effort of
picking up trash and clearing brush. Thanks to Tim (aka White
Beast) for bringing his truck. We filled the back of his fullsize
Chevy several times in the process of shuttling trash to the dumpster.
The police rolled by to say hello.
Apparently a neighbor called the cops to report someone
was cutting down trees in the park. It was obviously a misinterpretation
of efforts to clear the brush which had been broken and bent into the
stream in the park. As the clean up efforts concluded, Brentt
cooked burgers and hotdogs provided by the club on his own grill as well
as our president's grill. Food and refreshments were enjoyed by
all as we swapped unrepeatable stories and commented on how the park might be
enjoyable.
June 30: Meeting with ACE
It was brought to our attention in the June 20th
meeting that the Alaska
Center for the Environment (ACE) is currently working on a plan to
get some sort of wilderness designation for the land around Jim
Lake. In the subsequent meeting summary I made a scan of the
article in ACE's spring newsletter available, and it can still be found
by clicking here. Tim
mentioned that Joe LeBeau of ACE had expressed interest in meeting with representatives
of the club to explain the plan, if we choose. So Tim and myself
traveled out to Palmer on this particular Saturday. Joe showed us
a couple maps of the area, one was a land ownership map, the other a
topographical map, to help us understand better the area the center is
concerned about. He went on to explain that will turning the Jim
Lake area into a State park is not feasible, they are dedicated to
making the land some sort of park or wilderness refuge. When asked
if year round access to the glacier would be available, he responded
"Oh hell yes." After talking for a while the three of us
traveled out to Jim Lake to look in person at the land they wish to
'protect'. Tim and I got the impression that what the center is
looking to do sounds very reasonable at this time, and in fact if implemented
correctly may be something we could feel comfortable supporting.
But, keeping in mind that when asked to what extent the park/refuge
would extend in any direction no answer could be given, we plan to
continue a working relationship with Mr. LeBeau. As information
becomes available we will inform members through the webpage and our
meetings.
With the promise of a barbeque in the Valley Street Park once again, the turnout for our August clean-up effort was strong. Over 20 people showed to help collect trash. The park was in better shape than usual, but definitely needed some labor to make it presentable. In fact one of the local residents came out of her home, picked up a trash bag and aided in the effort. She had previously observed us cleaning up the park and decided to come out and give a hand this time. A big thank you to Piff for bringing waders and braving the water this time. A thanks should also go out to Brentt and Ryan for handling the food. After the trash was dumped and some hamburgers consumed, we held a short meeting. Topics covered were:
