Spooners Canyon in Johnson Valley, an EPIC story of how it came to be

Jerry Bransford

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This is an EPIC story by Pete Griffith about how Spooners Canyon in Johnson Valley came to be. I read it back in 2009 and loved it so much I have retold a shortened version of it several times over the years. Spooners Canyon came up again several days ago elsewhere and I was determined to find the original story. I found Pete Griffith on Facebook and he was happy to send it to me, turns out he's a really nice guy too.

This also tells just how tough the wheeling can be in Johnson Valley. Anyway, enjoy!!!

As told by Pete....

"Over New Year’s weekend 2008-09, I went to the Hammers with a friend to relax for a couple days and run some trails. As it turned out, we made a new trail that has become one of the Premier Hard Core trails at The Hammers: Spooners Canyon. Here is the story of how that happened.

We arrived at the lakebed late Sunday night, Dec. 28th and set up camp, lit the fire, and commenced with some revelry. The next morning, we decided to run Claw Hammer, which is an easy but very fun trail. Things were going really well, and we were having a good time, when my friend blew the high pressure power steering line on his Jeep. Not a really bad break, but definitely a show stopper for finishing the trail. This sent us back to camp, and the search for a new part was on.

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After more than a few phone calls, I finally got to CarQuest, who was able to special-order the part and get it to us the next morning. We went to town, ordered the part, and then went back to camp and rode the dirt bikes for the rest of the day. As we were coming back to camp after a very long ride, I looked over and saw another friend’s trailer and truck with his new buggy sitting in front, so I cruised over to say hi and invite him over for some campfire fun.

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That night we had a decent fire, but we had hit it pretty heavy the night before, so neither of us felt much like drinking. Mark and Levi came over for a while and shared our fire, but everyone called it quits pretty early and we went to sleep.

Now, I should mention here that it was getting VERY cold on the lakebed overnight. On Sunday night into Monday morning, it got down to 21 degrees. On Monday night it got down the 26, and even with two tent heaters going full blast all night, it sucked pretty bad. Of course, we didn't really know the meaning of "this sucks" yet, but we were only 12 short hours away from getting full and complete understanding. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Now it's Tuesday morning. We woke up and went over to see what our friend was doing for the day. After chatting for a little bit, we headed into town and picked up the part we ordered. Since we were there, we grabbed breakfast at Denny's. That turned out to be a very good idea. We also stopped at Food4Less and grabbed a bag of chimichangas and wrapped them up and loaded them on the manifolds. Also a very good choice. We had 4 each. The day before, we had talked to some others on the lakebed, who invited us out to go bomb around the desert for a little bit. One of them mentioned that he wanted to go mark the entrance to Outer Limits. We had been thinking about doing this trail, so we agreed to tag along.

After we fixed my friend’s' Jeep, we met up with our friends and headed out to the entrance of Outer Limits (we thought). It had been described to us as being hard but doable, and that we should finish it in a couple of hours. They said they would meet us at the exit. We decided, "Sure, why not?" and headed in.

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The trail started kind of mellow and steadily increased in intensity, until we realized, "Holy Crap! This is a hard trail!"

But we continued on, because even though it was hard, we were doing pretty well. It seemed kind of strange, though, because we noticed that there was a LOT of brush and vegetation in the trail, and there were no signs at all that ANYONE had ever been up this canyon. I wrote it off to the fact that it had probably been a long time since anyone had been out there, plus there had been a lot of rain. Still, there should have been SOMETHING. But we ignored those signs and forged ahead. After hitting a big climb a short way into the trail, we realized that we had hit a point of no return.

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There was no choice but to forge on. The winches were getting a WORKOUT, but we both had Warn winches, and they were doing well. However, I had noticed that my winch was starting get a little flakey. It would spool out, but not always back in. It seemed like the switch was going bad, but with a little work it kept going. So we continued on.

Then it happened. My friend was stuck in a bad climb with an undercut. We stacked as best we could and then started winching him out, and then...BOOM!!!! There went a CTM. Snapped the ears right off.

Hmmmm.....this is going to make the day worse.....

Our friends had said that the trail was only a little over a mile long, with a big waterfall at the end. We had already come about 3/4 of a mile, and figured we only needed to forge on for a little while more. So we got his Jeep out of where it was and kept moving on. I was pulling him through most of the rough stuff, but it was slow going. Then it started getting dark. I decided to walk to the trail a little and saw that we were coming up on a very, very nasty waterfall. But we were expecting this, and figured we were almost to the end. At this point it was dusk, and by the time we got to the waterfall, it was full dark. Now, at this point, we had been winching for a long, long time. The connector on my friend’s winch went bad, and the only way to make it work was for me to hold a paper clip in the connector on the winch while he advanced. So I wound up wheeling the trail, then coming back and walking the trail while holding onto the front of his Jeep. In the dark. Scary stuff.

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(At this point, I stopped taking pictures, because we were so focused on getting out of there I didn’t even think to pull out the camera again.)

But, we made it to the base of the waterfall. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but pictures, at this point, were the farthest thing from my mind. But, here's how it works. The waterfall is in the middle of a Z-turn, with a channel that seems cut out of pure rock leading into it. The channel is very off-camber, and tries to kick you into the opposite wall. It was tricky, but I made it through, and then approached the real obstacle. The waterfall is nearly vertical and about 15 feet tall. Right in the middle of it is a cup shaped indentation. The line is to start left and veer right as you go through the middle. I didn't even think about trying to drive it, since Chris was already broken and I needed to stay unbroken. So before I even started, I hooked up the winch. I tensioned up and then started my climb. To my amazement, I immediately overran the winch and popped up and over. I would not have guessed that I could drive it, but I did. Incredible. To get out of the little canyon, we had to make a sharp right at the top and grind over a rock that hangs you on your belly pan. There is no way to avoid this, so I kept winching and just winced as I ground over the skid plate. Ugh. But I made it, and then I found a place to turn around so I could winch him up. We hooked him up and then he started up.

The dead front driver side wheel on his Jeep made it so he couldn't drive the waterfall on the correct line, and he wound up completely on his side. But we managed to get him righted, dragged him over the belly pan killer, and then continued on, confident that we were almost out.

This sounds like it was an easy transition, but it actually took a full 2 hours to get us both through. We started the waterfall at 6:30 pm, and it was 8:40 when we finally got clear. But we were in good spirits, because we "knew" that we were close. If only I knew then what I know now....bwahahahaha. We were screwed; we just didn't know it yet. So we forged on.

About another 20 feet in, I realized that I couldn't turn left. I took a look under my Jeep and sure enough, I had taco'd the track bar. Grrrr. Nothing to do but hook the winch to the track bar and try to pull it straight. We hooked it up and then I started pulling. The suspension fully compressed, and the track bar started to straighten, and then BOOM! The winch line broke. But my track bar was straight. So we threw the broken end into the Jeep and forged on. After about another 100 yards it bent again. We tied the broken end of the winch line to the track bar and straightened it again. My winch line kept getting shorter and shorter.

We forged on for quite a while, all the time thinking that the exit must be just ahead. There were rocks. BIG rocks. There were intensely hard obstacles. I drove it all. Then we came to another climb. I started winching my friend up and then SNAP!!!!!!! There went the stub shaft on the right side on his Jeep. Now the front was completely dead. We couldn't get him up the ledge, even with the winch. Grrrr. We decided at that point that we had to leave his Jeep behind and try to get my Jeep out.

We walked the rest of the trail with a flashlight, and determined that we were 200 yards from the exit, finally. This was at 2 AM. The trail just kept getting worse, though, and we knew that it was going to be a HARD 600 feet. My friend decided that the best bet for him would be to disassemble his front end while I continued to work my way forward. I did this and got about 100 feet up the trail until I got stopped cold by a waterfall. There was a rock squarely in the way that I could not drive around or over. I had to winch it, but the last time I had straightened my track bar, the cable mysteriously did not break, and it was tied in a knot around the axle. Winch rope knots are ridiculously hard to untie. I spent over an hour getting that thing loose, but finally I managed it and got the rock moved. But I was so tired by then, I couldn't get the Jeep through. I kept getting high-centered on another rock I had moved. At about 3:00 AM I finally had had enough, and sat down the in the Jeep to take a nap while Chris kept working on his.

I think I drifted in and out for about 45 minutes, and then Chris came walking up to my Jeep, dumped his axles in, and then we tried to get me moving again. We got me through the nasty waterfall, and then, as I started up another climb I hear SNAP!!!!!! There went my left rear axle shaft. That took another 20 minutes, and then at that point we were just done. I shut everything off and we tried to get some sleep. It was only a couple hours from dawn, and I was pretty sure that we would find a better way through when we could finally see the trail again. I was in my front seat and my friend tried to curl up in my back seat. He claims he never got to sleep, but I heard him snore for at least 20 minutes, so he got some. But...by 4:30 it was just unbearably cold. He said 'Look I know you're not gay and I'm certainly not either' so he suggested that we go climb into the back seat of his Jeep, since he at least had a top on, and we could stay warmer. So we trudged back down the canyon and climbed into his Jeep a huddled together trying to stay warm. As embarrassing as it sounds, it worked, and when the sun finally came up again, we felt better.

Wednesday, New Year's Eve.

Before we started trying again to get my Jeep out, we walked the trail and determined the best way out. Then we got to winching me out. At this point, my winch stopped spooling in and would only spool out. I absolutely HAD to have a winch, so we spooled the cable on backward and kept going. It was a hokey fix, but it worked well enough to keep me moving forward. Eventually, we got me to within 100 feet of the exit. And then it happened. SNAP!!!!! There went the left front hub. CRAP!!!!!!! But I had to keep trying, so we reset the winch, threw some rocks, and tried again. Not 10 feet later, BOOM!!!!!!!! The front right stub shaft bit it. That was it, I was done.

My friend decided to try to rebuild one of his axles to at least get 3-wheel drive back, and I hiked to the top of the mountain to see if I could get cell service. At around 9 AM I was able to finally get a call out and got a hold of my friend from the lakebed, who told us they had been looking for us all night. So I hiked back down and let Chris know the Calvary was coming, and then we waited. And waited. At this point, I still thought we were on Outer Limits, and had told him that instead of exiting, we had just kept going. This was untrue, however. I hiked out a couple times trying to find the people who were looking for us, but had no luck. Finally, around noon I decided to try to make the call again. I had only just a couple minutes of battery left, but I managed to get my friend back on the phone. He said they still just couldn't find us, so I told him I was going to hike all the way out to the road that leads in to where the entrance to Aftershock is. It was about 3 miles from where we were, so it took a little while. Finally, I got out to where I could see the road and my friend called me. As we were talking, my battery died, but it held long enough for me to find him. Saved!!! He had to get back to camp to meet his wife, but he got me hooked up with a couple of Tin Benders, and they all came back in to get us extracted.

While I was explaining how my winch was messed up, one of the guys looked at me and said, "Watch, I'm gonna make these guys think I'm a freakin' Guru!!!" The he spoke up and said, "Here's how to fix your winch." We took the motor bolts out, cleaned the ground contacts and re-installed them and lo and behold, my winch started working again. Woohoo! Back in business. We stacked, and pulled, and stacked, and pulled. It took both my winch and the winch on the Hendrix Motorsports x-chassis buggy to get me out, but we did it. At one point, my track bar bent again, and we HAD to fix it; I had to turn left. So I explained how we had been fixing it all night. One of the guys wanted to take it out, but I said, no, we can do it here. He was skeptical, but said, "Show me", so I did. One snapped winch line later, we were back in business. And after that, I was out. My friend was in much better shape, and with some judicious winching, he 3-wheeled it out of the trail, and we were rescued. During all this, we explained how we stayed warm in the coldest point of the night, and everyone laughed and started calling it Spooners Canyon, in reference to us huddling up in the back of the Jeep. Even though we are the butt end of the joke, the name stuck. I know we technically get to name the trail, since we broke it, and we finished it, even if we needed some help at the end. But Spooners Canyon works, and sometime in the future I'm going to get a big laugh out of it.

Our rescuers stuck with us all the way back to camp, and then we packed up and headed home. We were TIRED, though, and decided to stay at the Best Western in Yucca Valley. As we were headed there, we were both all over the road like drunks. My friend kept stopping, thinking he had something wrong. There was a weird vibration, and he kept hearing a thumping noise that would come and go. We managed to keep going, though, and made it into Yucca Valley. I got the room, and then we pulled the rigs around back and got our stuff. At some point during this, I locked the keys to my Suburban in it, but I was so tired, I decided to just blow it off and figure it out in the morning. I went in the room, took a shower, and then passed out. And that was the end of our crazy New Year’s at The Hammers. I have since sold my TJ and bought an XJ, which will NEVER see a Hammers Trail.

Pete's closing note: It’s been 14 years or so since that day. I’ve since sold the XJ, had a 5.9 ZJ in between, and am now back in a TJ, and none of them have EVER been on a Hammers trail. I’ve only been to JV twice since then (not including a couple trips to KOH for work), and I wasn’t interested in even LOOKING at another Hammers trail."
 
I'm always amazed at the obvious signs they fully ignored. The beginning of Spooners was at that time unmarked with no tracks or road going to it. The trail even right after we first started running it still had lots of vegetation in the middle of the trail that is long since gone. There were very few tracks when we started that showed any traffic. No oil spills and oil trails on any of the stuff in the middle of the trail, none of the rocks on the mild climbs have been disturbed. All the things that tell you that wilderness is around you were there to see. They just didn't pay attention.
 
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I'm always amazed at the obvious signs they fully ignored. The beginning of Spooners was at that time unmarked with no tracks or road going to it. The trail even right after we first started running it still had lots of vegetation in the middle of the trail that is long since gone. There were very few tracks when we started that showed any traffic. No oil spills and oil trails on any of the stuff in the middle of the trail, none of the rocks on the mild climbs have been disturbed. All the things that tell you that wilderness is around you were there to see. They just didn't pay attention.

Indeed, you are right. Hindsight is 20/20 after all. There were lots of signs that we were in over our heads that we completely missed or ignored. Its easy to to look back and say, "If I had just done this, or seen that, I would not have done THAT." Of course, then there would not be a Spooners Canyon, and no epic story to go with it. I'm sure it would still have been cut at some point, but there would be no story other than "Hey, we cut this insane new trail today! Check it out!" on Pirate and it would have some inane name like Fender Hammer or something stupid like that.
 
Indeed, you are right. Hindsight is 20/20 after all. There were lots of signs that we were in over our heads that we completely missed or ignored. Its easy to to look back and say, "If I had just done this, or seen that, I would not have done THAT." Of course, then there would not be a Spooners Canyon, and no epic story to go with it. I'm sure it would still have been cut at some point, but there would be no story other than "Hey, we cut this insane new trail today! Check it out!" on Pirate and it would have some inane name like Fender Hammer or something stupid like that.

In your defense, you only missed the entrance to OL by 100 yards, so there is that. You just couldn't see it from the entrance to Spooners. I'm sad they have raced on it, it was never better than right after it was cut.
 
In your defense, you only missed the entrance to OL by 100 yards, so there is that. You just couldn't see it from the entrance to Spooners. I'm sad they have raced on it, it was never better than right after it was cut.
Never having done anything tougher than Sledgehammer out there Blaine how would you rank Spooners against the toughest trails in JV?
 
Never having done anything tougher than Sledgehammer out there Blaine how would you rank Spooners against the toughest trails in JV?

Depends on the day. Harder than OL most of the time. It used to be just a fun, don't lose your focus trail and then the section just past the Z turn started getting tore up. Depending on which rock has moved where, it can go from, ok this is kind of a bitch but doable to "fuck all of this, where can we turn around".

It is in the upper half of the common trails in difficulty. Sledge is enough messed up just past the plaque that it isn't nearly as doable as it used to be.
 
Great answer Blaine especially loved the fuck all of this, where can we turn around 🤣
thank you!

The section below the Z turn is pretty much a boulder strewn nothing burger. Pay attention, stay on top of the rocks and work your way through it. Well, that works until it doesn't. When it doesn't, you get pics like this.

Larry trail repair JV.PNG