I’ve been putting off writing a trip report for my trip to Seattle because I’ve been pretty busy, but now that I’ve got a few minutes I realize I don’t have much to say. I went up there to hang out for a weekend as a way to get outta Dodge, and to meet Mike Thorson and his famous Walker Valley.

Mikey is mostly what you’d expect. ‘Nuf said there... Seattle is as well - rain, cold and lots of rednecks and white trash. ;) Good people though, and I’m glad I got to meet them.

Walker Valley is fun. It was snowing most of the time we were there, and there was mud under-wheel. The rocks are slick (as promised) and the trails are narrow with lots of trees to move through - kinda like the Midwest. It’s not super hardcore, but there is a lot of fun terrain with some good rocks thrown in.

The trucks:

• Mikey’s TJ with 36" Swampers locked front and rear
• Mark’s stretched SOA YJ with a 409ci V8, 36" Swampers, D44 F&R
• Andy’s SOAYJ with 36" Boggers Detroit’d and ARB’d
• John’s FJ40 with 33’s (?) and a single lockright.

We also ran into a couple of interesting rigs on trail. One was a very nicely set up Flatfender, and one was Big Joe. If you still have the issue of Jp magazine highlighting Walker Valley look him up - it’s a red YJ. That YJ is now sporting a Warn coil conversion. Apparently it’s also sporting some freshly broken front axle shafts and some other damage as well - we only saw him at the beginning of the day.

The trail names won’t mean much to most of you, but here’s what we did. Enter park, go up fire road to Expressway. This is a tight and windy uphill trail with one nice rock wall. Well...a wall/ledge on the right and a crack/gully on the left. Mark took the left, and then Mikey did the same. I was thinking that the right line looked like more fun, but they said it’s a good way to roll over. Then Andy came up and also did the left line. I think everyone’s jaw dropped when John came up the right side in his FJ40. One locker, small tires. HAHA. Driver is everything.

Mark Wade: