The Southern California chapter of TTORA is very proud to announce that the 11th annual TTORA National Takeover event will be held in Big Bear Lake / Johnson Valley, CA.

Centrally located in Southern California, Big Bear Lake is located in the San Bernardino National Forest. The San Bernardino National Forest (SBNF) covers approximately 676,000 acres of mountainous region and is home to miles of OHV trails for 4x4, ATV and motorcycle use.  

Just down the north side of mountain, lies the Johnson Valley OHV. The Johnson Valley OHV area covers almost 200,000 acres of desert land in the Mojave Desert. Johnson Valley offers a variety of terrain from dry lakebeds, sand dunes and of course the world famous Hammer trails.

Additional information will be forthcoming in the next few months such as a list of trails, information on lodging and camping opportunities, etc.

With such an expanse of off-roading options, Takeover2010 will offer something for everyone. So whether you wheel a stock 4x4, a fully built rock-crawler, or something in between – there is a trail with your name on it.

Today's plan was to meet and run Coyote Canyon, and then maybe Calcite Mine, and maybe OWSVRA. Our group consisted of: Pray4Surf, SAR_Squid79, Misfit Toy, rivethead, skywalker82

We attempted Coyote Canyon, and with all the SoCal storms this week, that trail is completely messed up. You can no longer get past the 3rd water crossing. As a matter of fact - 3rd water crossing is pretty much nonexistant right now. In the past a Subaru Outback could have made it up to the 3rd crossing, but now you would need 33's and a locker just to get up to that point. I feel bad about Coyote Canyon. That's one of my favorite SoCal trails, and one of my favorite camping spots. That trail is going to be inaccessible for months and possibly until next year.

After that - we decided to head over to the BLM trails over by the dump. The trail became very muddy, so we detoured through the open desert, to try to cut over to the back of OWSVRA. That's when we just happened to come across these 3 Ford guys out in the middle of nowhere - literally. We were on the open BLM land, not on a trail, and just happened across these guys in the open desert.

There was a late model Exploder (bone stock 4WD), a F-150 (bone stock 2WD, No recovery points), and an F350 SuperDuty CrewCab Diesel (4WD) - ALL STUCK!

After a 2 1/2 hour recovery of those guys, we found our way on to San Felipe wash, and followed it to Blow Sand Trail, and ran that out to HWY-78, where we aired up, and headed home at about 4:30.

It was a very interesting run. VERY MUDDY! ...especially for SoCal - but I think we all had a lot of fun.

The group all met up at the junction of 3N16 and 3N61. We waited for one more vehicle to arrive then we hit the trail at 10:20am. A tractor had passed the group earlier and left some rough trail in front of us. It didn't take long for the first issue to come up. Saphteemon had his swing out tire carrier rip apart and fall down behind his rig. I loaded up his tire, he strapped the carrier to the roll bar and we moved on. The tractor headed out 3N02 and tracks were faint going into Holcomb Valley on 3N16, so we kept heading west. Came up to 3N32 and then headed north to the east entrance to John Bull (3N10). There was some reasonable snowfall coming down at this time.

Once we got to the beginning of John Bull, there was tracks leading up about 50ft past the first boulder field. Erocker drew the short straw and gave it a shot. He made it as far as the existing tracks, but coming back down off the rocks proved to be a bit more difficult then getting up. First he planted his axle on a rock, then slid back into a rock and could not go forward. So with the help of Oldschooltoy, we practiced our recovery techniques.

Once Eric was free and clear, we headed back 3N32 to 3N16 to Holcomb Valley. We stopped for a group shot at 3N16 and Van Dusen. From there we headed to 3N07 and to the area behind Holcomb campground to play in the flat areas and break for lunch.

After lunch, we decided to head for 3N12 and go up Delmar Mountain. We got as far at the trail junction when we spotted some vehicles performing a recovery. The Jeeps said they couldn't make it up the trail, and turned around when they came upon this Dodge owner that got in over his head. Everybody in their group seemed very inexperienced with recovery techniques, but in the end they all made it back on the trail.

With the trail now clear, we planned our approach, and had Oldschooltoy take the lead followed by Saphteemon, Monkeyproof and the rest of the group. That put the most well equipped vehicle in the lead to cut tracks. On we went...

It was pretty slick and there was an average of 2-3ft of snow on 3N12 as we neared the top. That proved to be pretty difficult to cut through, so Oldschooltoy, Saphteemon with Monkeyproof and myself as shovel crew built a line to push the final few hundred feet to the top.

By the time we had the rest of the trail cut, the rest of the group had caught up and we finished off the trail without incident and got down to Fawnskin by 4:30pm.

We aired up in Fawnskin and started to head down Hwy 18. We got 3 miles past the dam when the Caltrans crew turned everybody around due to rock slides. We turned around, dodged a few 2ft boulders on the road and most of the group headed down Hwy 38.

This year's SoCal TTORA Anza Borrego Desert Run was great! We had a really great group of guys and gals. I met a lot of new faces, and I hope to see each and every one again in the future!

This year's participants were: Johnnie, sparky, Proudrunner, pray4surf, Rivethead242, BASEjumper, TacoDell, gsmsnuffy, Zam15, Scuba, SAR_Squid79, Desertcamper67, Pikeman

We had a fun little raffle that worked out very well. We had 13 rigs & 13 prizes! EVERYBODY WON SOMETHING!

I would like to thank our 4 sponsors:
SoCal TTORA, All-Pro, Camburg and Demello Off-Road

Camping at Fish Creek Camp worked out AWESOME! Everyone found the place, everyone showed up on time, we had our driver's meeting at 0900 as planned, and all the runs ended back at camp. We only had 2 groups this year. A Medium and a Difficult (there was no interest in an "Easy" run).

The Medium group ran Canyon Sin Nombre out to the historic Stage Coach Station site, where we stopped for lunch and lectured some Jeepers on treading lightly . Then we back-tracked to Arroyo Seco Del Diablo to Middle Mesa, down Diablo Dropoff, through "Broken Shaft Gulch", to Sandstone Canyon, to Fish Creek Wash, and then Baja Raced back to camp - arriving just before sunset!

Great run - Great group - lots 'o fun - no carnage! ...and best of all we didn't have to drive an additional 70 miles back to Truckhaven!