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.

Arrived at Flying J's just before 10am and joined up with 9 other vehicles. We headed off to the trailhead about 10miles away. A group of Jeeps already there started up the trail when we arrived. Everybody aired down, we had a drivers meeting then we started up the trail about 10:45.

Many of the uphill sections on Lockwood Valley trail are much more rutted and difficult this year. Several of the steeper sections would be very challenging for a vehicle without a locker. The switchback section was also very rutted at each of the turns. Several of us had wheelstands due to the ruts on the inside corners. Some sections near the 3point turn and Kabob hill were very off camber and leaned us over into the brush on the side of the trail. The rest of Lockwood trail was about the same as previous years. We finished up that portion around 12:30pm when we arrived at our lunch spot.

Socal TTORA 2010 Run Schedule

April
2-4 - NVTTORA Easter Mojave
17-18 - Calico

May
1 - Forest Aid tree planting - Big Bear
15 - Cleghorn/Pilot Rock/(possibly) Dishpan

June
5-6 - Upper Coyote Canyon / Toro Peak
19 - Miller Jeep Trail

July
17 - Rowher Flats

August
6-8 - TTORA Takeover, Big Bear Lake

September
11 - Azusa Canyon
25 - Corral Canyon

October
8-10 - Off Road Expo, Pomona Fairplex
16 - Cougar Buttes / Bull Frog trail

November
6-7 - Annual Anza Borrego Run

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.