Old thread but figured I'd update as we just made an attempt at this one. Made it near the top but hit snow on the last section before the lake. The trail near the top is GNARLY. Pictures really don't do it justice. Even with no snow this trail will really take balls to get to the top of. Locker(s) absolutely required. Might make another attempt later in the summer but honestly not sure, it's super sketchy at the top.
The main differences in winches and generally what you pay for are load, reliability, and speed. Vast majority of winches you'll find on tacomas, 4runners, etc are going to be 8-10k lb load rating, and those work just fine. In terms of brand and reliability, warn is probably among the best - I've personally run a ton of warn winches and have never had a single issue. That's not to say other brands aren't good too though. Winches are pretty simple devices and even the cheaper ones don't crap out that often.
Within a particular brand of winch there will often be higher end models and usually what sets them apart is the winch speed. I never really paid too much attention up until I bought my jeep which just happened to come with a higher end warn on it and the speed difference is really noticible and makes longer pulls a bit nicer. Whether that justifies the additional cost is up to you, realistically the base model versions work fine as well, if a bit slower.
One last thing to consider on a winch is what winch cable you'll run. Many winches come from the facory with steel cable, which has a number of downsides including added weight, and personal danger (when steel cable snaps it can do major damage to people and vehicles). A much better solution is to use synthetic winch rope - it costs more but saves a ton of weight and reduces the risk of personal harm. I would recommend synthetic line regardless of what winch you decide on.
Oh yea that is a good idea, I wasn't thinking in terms of a broadcast system but that actually makes a ton of sense, also the ability for regular users to use the system would be great. Let's definitely talk more this weekend.
Alex most of the devices support sending email, so I was thinking IMAP since I already have an email server set up anyway - saves having to use another 3rd party service. Sms is an interesting idea though, hadn't considered it. The biggest issue so far is how to handle replies. In my mind I can imagine an @vioffroad.com email address that people can add to their spot/garmin and then send a message which automatically creates a post in a special section of the forum - then people on the site who reply generate an outgoing email to the sending address which should be recieved on the users device. A couple concerns though would be message limitations (the devices have small screens and low bandwidth availability), inability to have multiple senders (every message would look like it's coming from the same place), and also spam.. any spam messages that got through to the dedicated email address would result in a spam post on the site, and that's not to mention replies that could potentially hit someone with a number of incoming message charges. Anyway just some of the things I've been considering - let me know if you have any other suggestions or want to discuss further!
Also if anyone else uses these or other satellite devices let me know - I'm not sure if the demand is there to justify developing something like this, but if it is I'd be in to getting something going.
Pic dump from some recent trips out
Old thread but figured I'd update as we just made an attempt at this one. Made it near the top but hit snow on the last section before the lake. The trail near the top is GNARLY. Pictures really don't do it justice. Even with no snow this trail will really take balls to get to the top of. Locker(s) absolutely required. Might make another attempt later in the summer but honestly not sure, it's super sketchy at the top.
The main differences in winches and generally what you pay for are load, reliability, and speed. Vast majority of winches you'll find on tacomas, 4runners, etc are going to be 8-10k lb load rating, and those work just fine. In terms of brand and reliability, warn is probably among the best - I've personally run a ton of warn winches and have never had a single issue. That's not to say other brands aren't good too though. Winches are pretty simple devices and even the cheaper ones don't crap out that often.
Within a particular brand of winch there will often be higher end models and usually what sets them apart is the winch speed. I never really paid too much attention up until I bought my jeep which just happened to come with a higher end warn on it and the speed difference is really noticible and makes longer pulls a bit nicer. Whether that justifies the additional cost is up to you, realistically the base model versions work fine as well, if a bit slower.
One last thing to consider on a winch is what winch cable you'll run. Many winches come from the facory with steel cable, which has a number of downsides including added weight, and personal danger (when steel cable snaps it can do major damage to people and vehicles). A much better solution is to use synthetic winch rope - it costs more but saves a ton of weight and reduces the risk of personal harm. I would recommend synthetic line regardless of what winch you decide on.
Oh yea that is a good idea, I wasn't thinking in terms of a broadcast system but that actually makes a ton of sense, also the ability for regular users to use the system would be great. Let's definitely talk more this weekend.
Alex most of the devices support sending email, so I was thinking IMAP since I already have an email server set up anyway - saves having to use another 3rd party service. Sms is an interesting idea though, hadn't considered it. The biggest issue so far is how to handle replies. In my mind I can imagine an @vioffroad.com email address that people can add to their spot/garmin and then send a message which automatically creates a post in a special section of the forum - then people on the site who reply generate an outgoing email to the sending address which should be recieved on the users device. A couple concerns though would be message limitations (the devices have small screens and low bandwidth availability), inability to have multiple senders (every message would look like it's coming from the same place), and also spam.. any spam messages that got through to the dedicated email address would result in a spam post on the site, and that's not to mention replies that could potentially hit someone with a number of incoming message charges. Anyway just some of the things I've been considering - let me know if you have any other suggestions or want to discuss further!
Also if anyone else uses these or other satellite devices let me know - I'm not sure if the demand is there to justify developing something like this, but if it is I'd be in to getting something going.