Kiamichi Trail (K-Trail) Adventure: The good, the bad, and the ????

[LaOutbackTrail]

The Kiamichi Trail in South East Oklahoma has recently sparked my interest. An unmaintained mountain trail with several challenging sections and some great views, for this part of the country.

Logistically, we planned this in a couple of days and didnt have much more than the K-Trail in the plan. Meet in Clayton, Oklahoma on Saturday morning at 10:00 (yeh right) and head east to Mena. That meant, an early morning start for my wife, daughter, and kiddo. Attoirere met us in Clayton as planned, Mr. Leary and The Mrs. managed to get a late start, but managed to meet up with us at lunch time.



In the mean time, Joseph (attoire) and I checked out a little trail near Clayton lake state park.






Then we explore Hurd Creek Trail:



Joseph has a lockrite locker in the rear, I would have a hard time pulling through this spot with an open differential.

And then we wait for Mr. Leary and The Mrs.

[RU55ELL]

Looks like a fun time so far.....

[LaOutbackTrail]

After a couple failed attempts to find the original start of K-Trail- which was the K-trail as well as Hurd Creek Trail--- a branch to K-trail.
The correct access to K-Trail is Clayton Creek Trail, off of Nine Pines road (2 miles south of Clayton).





Then for lunch. Ravioli was served straight out of the can, heated on the stove.

The view was good.

And everyone enjoyed a bit of play time on the ice.



The first real, challenging up hill climb.

[LaOutbackTrail]

Not to mention, the Powderpuff squad in the Leary-mobile



Mike kicked some ICE. This piece shot forward about 15 feet after busting through the ice...


And a whole drove of hogs ran across the trail. 4-6 large boars and then probably 20-30 small piglets. Them swines flu across the trail!


As you've noticed, we've encountered many frozen mud holes... Much of which, the ice was 2"or thicker. And as the evening progressed and temps dropped, the ice got even thicker, closer to 4-5"!

Here is an example of a mudhole. As you can see, I was able to break through the ice..... or could I?

[LaOutbackTrail]

A little bit of clunking around...




This bus. We. Have. No. Clue. How it got to where its at.



And down the hill, we find a good view.

[Mamontof]

[QUOTE=LaOutbackTrail;540642]

Looks like you have allot of fun in this trip !

With a good buddy's any ice mud hole road a Joy !

Thanks for a photos

[LaOutbackTrail]

More of the bad ice...

[LaOutbackTrail]

Mike comes over the radio: "Scott, your truck seems to be tracking weird"

At this point i did notice my truck feeling squirrelly in some ruts. We pull over in a clearing and find this:

Looks good, right? Lets look at the other side....

Rut-rowh....

Now lets break this quickly break this down... The 1inch lift block that a previous owner had placed on the truck decided to go crunch on the trail.... and since the U bolts were now loose, allowed for a bit of shift in the axle position.
You can see here that the U bolts are out of wack.

[LaOutbackTrail]

So, in this predicament, we couldn't just remove the block.

If you notice, the u-bolt's thread is shot. And, the ubolts are way to long. we couldnt tighten them down any farther....

Our only option at this point was to turn the block around and tighten everything down as tight as possible.


Mike threatened to use the BFH on my cold ones....







Sorry, those pics were out of order, oh well...

[Street Wolf]

Sooo... where is this again?