Glass House Mountains Trip Report

We started our trip at the Caboolture BP where we all filled up on Maccas as the long day was ahead of us. We were sitting there waiting for Richard to come inside for a feed as his passengers had while he was filling up. We kept on waiting and waiting and then decided to go outside and that is when we saw him waiting for us in the car park. Then we started the usual pre trip meeting and that is when Brent showed us his idea of pre-recording the Duty of Care and playing it through the radio. It worked well. Everyone then jumped into the 4 Patrols and headed off down the highway to the start of Glass House. Our first track was ‘The Canyon’ which is a very tight track with step assents and descents. Peter went first making it with no worries but we knew the other cars might have some troubles. This is where the bow saw and the shovels came out and the first bit of track rebuilding started. We cut up fallen trees and dug out the humps in the middle of the track to fill in the hollows. We then got the MaxTrax out to help along the way. Brent goes first with Richard guiding him, as there were big holes on both sides of the track. He had some trouble getting it out of the gully at the bottom of the canyon with only losing a few inches of rubber off the tyres. Craig went next with no trouble getting out of the gully but trouble getting up the embankment. We put the MaxTrax under his spinning wheels with no luck as he worked closer to the right bank with his side mirror almost breaking off. We then decided to use his winch as the best form of recovery. We even had trouble with that as the car struggled to gain traction with the wet ground but we finally got it up the hill. Then Richard went and with a little right foot down, he did it easy. This took us 2 hours to do 500m. We then headed off to find a few more challenging section to the test the vehicles and their drivers. There were many holes and rocks that could have done damage to the cars but the rock sliders helped with that. All the cars made it through all right as the chicken track was right next to hard track. We then made our way to Little Red to really test the cars. Once we arrived there, we all got out and said the same thing, ‘S**t’. We all looked at the track and then the chicken track and there was not much difference. We started grabbing logs and filling the ruts and picking the right lines to take. Peter went up first with no worries - the rest tried to follow but with different results. Brent had trouble with his Locker not working and losing another inch of tread. So as he got towards the top, Peter had to snatch him up the last bit. Craig went next with a bit of trouble but precise wheel
placement got him up half way - but it was the next half that was the real problem. So we got his winch out for the second time to get him up. But as we were running it, we found that the winch had spooled all on one side and had kinked itself and reversed looping as it was stuck against the inside of the bulbar. We then had to take the front winch plate off and reverse the winch to pull it through, which worked a treat. So we pulled his car up and then Richard followed with no worries. We then headed off to the Lookout for some much needed lunch, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Then we headed home from an awesome day. It was a fantastic trip that was a real eye opener to the visitors and one of the only trips where the trip leader said ‘why is the trip harder than the recce?’. Also, a big thanks to everyone who let passengers in their cars, as it was an awesome day to experience hard trips without doing any damage.
Nick Beresford.