Stuck in Muck, This Crowd Is in Hog Heaven

M an works alone in garage. Man bores out cylinders, replaces trannie and transfer case, installs high-performance valves, shocks, drive shafts. Man mutters, moans and sheds bits of blood and skin on rusted bolts.

Man drives to the mountains, meets other men. Popeye forearms, scabby knuckles, shaved heads. Man drives souped-up truck into the mud. Engine thunders. Mud pinwheels into the sky.

Truck begins to bog. Wheels spin. Engine clatters and whines. Tach needle hits red. Oil light flickers. Pistons blow out bottom. Solid steel axle shears apart like wire. Truck stops.

Mud wins.

Man works alone in garage. . . .

*

The off-roaders of Azusa Canyon continue their ritual week after week, heading up California 39 to the San Gabriel Canyon Off-Road Vehicle Area, an expanse of mud flats that emerge every year through a quirk of hydrological engineering.

Every fall, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works releases water from the San Gabriel Reservoir, and a mechanically inclined breed of outdoor enthusiast converges on the resulting mud in a rumbling, competitive display of drag-strip horsepower.

For a $5 entrance fee, any four-wheel-drive vehicle can enter the 150-acre off-road area, which is managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

But beware: Although your stock Lexus SUV or Suzuki Samurai might get you over the sand and rocks, the mud will quickly subdue it--directly in front of jeering, tattooed crowds camped out on the sandy bank to watch.

Strangely, this inevitable outcome does not stop novices from trying.

“They get stuck instantly,” said Mike Bishop, president of the Azusa Canyon Off Roaders Assn. “We usually leave them there for a few hours, then tow them out.”

For the regular “canyon critters,” the goal is to careen farther, faster and louder into the deepest trough of mud.

The conditions change like snow on a ski slope, with fresh mud taking the place of fresh powder. Some trucks go 20 yards; some go a couple hundred. Eventually, everyone gets stuck and hauled out by his buddies.

From up on the lip of the highway, the canyon bottom might look like pure chaos, dust rising over an environmentalist’s nightmare of the apocalypse. But there are fewer complaints than might be expected.

“If people are going to off-road, that’s as good of a place as any,” said Jeff Yann, chairman of the Sierra Club’s San Gabriel Valley Task Force. “It’s already an artificial environment, the bathtub ring around the reservoir.”

And it probably keeps some of the vehicles out of pristine areas, he said. “There are people who enjoy this kind of thing,” Yann added, “and there is a need to set aside acreage for that use.”

Off-roaders have cavorted at the site for decades. Just 14 miles north of Azusa, the muddy spot is an anomaly during Southern California’s dry months and, in the 1980s, began to draw thousands of people as four-wheel-driving became more popular.

The situation quickly spun out of control.

“It was pretty wild,” said Jerry Sirski, the area’s district recreation officer for the Forest Service. “There was a lot of drinking, big bonfires, big parties. . . . Almost every weekend there would be DUI fatalities on Highway 39.”

The Forest Service took control in 1988, banning alcohol, setting strict rules and charging an entrance fee. The Azusa Canyon Off Roaders Assn. was established soon after to help maintain order and ensure that off-roading would not be banned because of rowdy renegades.

Now the group keeps people from plowing up and down the bed of the San Gabriel River, where the threatened Santa Ana sucker lives. Members also stop newcomers from washing the mud off their cars in the reservoir. And they rush to clean up spilled oil or fuel.

Arriving on a recent Sunday, Bishop climbed out of his 1979 Ford F250 at the staging area and let some air out of his tires for better traction.

Other canyon critters pulled up in an array of cars, mostly from the 1970s, when horsepower ruled: Chevy Blazers, Jeep Wranglers and original Toyota Land Cruisers.

As Bishop headed into the dirt, Jim Cook revved his 1978 Ford. Cook, a differential mechanic, has put about $30,000 into his truck over the years.

“My hero,” Bishop yelled, then bowed. “Cook’s got the baddest truck out there. It’s like a stealth bomber.”

Although the action may look like it’s all about fun, each driver is really competing to make the ultimate “trophy pass.”

“You know when someone is making the trophy pass,” said Bishop, a floor manager at Tustin Mitsubishi. “They pass right by the crowd into the deepest mud, with the most noise and the most mud flying.”

By the reservoir that morning, a few had already gone at it. Their 44-inch “bogger” tires, like rubber paddle wheels, had carved deep ruts. In the back of one old pickup, a motley mixed-breed, short-haired dog named Daisy chomped at the bits of mud spraying up from the wheels. Soon the truck was stuck, and Bishop and others went to the rescue.

Although camaraderie is part of the allure, helping buddies get unstuck can be the most dangerous task. Often, the drivers strap their vehicles in a train to pull their friends out. Ropes and belts break. Chains rip chassis apart.

Cook once had a heavy metal hook rocket through his back window when the tow rope, humming with tension, snapped. Bishop uses a tugboat rope, thick as a python.

As he helped pull the truck out, a little Toyota diesel-powered number got stuck, the engine bleating like a wounded goat. “Es muy pesada,” one driver complained about the mud. “It’s very heavy.”

It was an ethnically mixed crowd. “By the end of the day, everybody is brown,” Bishop quipped.

Finally, the moment all awaited was at hand: Cook was ready. He pulled off the bank, his truck grumbling quietly at the beginning of the trough.

“Watch the brown Ford. He puts on a good show,” one man whispered about Cook’s truck.

Cook gunned it. The engine growled, then wailed. The high-pitch sound reverberated off the canyon walls, an angry shredding-sheet-metal kind of racket.

The back wheels shed mud like wood chips off a buzz saw. But as the rounds per minute mounted, the truck started to flag. Cook was losing traction, digging in deeper than his axles. Up to the doors.

Stuck.

“He didn’t lock up,” someone chortled, meaning that Cook went at it in two-wheel drive to show off even more. He was towed out.

Then he locked up his hubs and tried it again in four-wheel-drive. The car roared like a dragon venting rage. But it bogged down again and again, eventually sucking a valve into the cylinder.

Time to go home. Engine dead. Cook griped, but he noted that his last engine led to bigger problems:

“It put rocks through people’s windshields from 200 feet away.”