The girl turned almost 1 year old and it was time to take her for her maiden voyage with some friends. I have not been up to Gold Lake and it seemed like a great opportunity to camp and enjoy some trails. Gold Lake 4x4 campgrounds are right by the water, but the bathrooms were closed due to storm damage (not a big deal). We found a nice spot to set up camp.



Since she is completely stock didn't want to take on hard trails. The plan on Saturday was to run over and do Gold Valley trail. She did really well and had to get to know the options and 4x4 info screens. Took a while to get used to what the screen actually displayed due to wide angle lenses vs the actual trail (always best to have a spotter obviously).







The trail was mild mostly, but a few harder spots, which pictures or videos will never do justice as most people know. I'm used to 4x4s with a lot more clearance, MT tires and some good protection from steel sliders, bumpers and skids. So I had to take it slow and easy. The Rock Crawl mode with rear locker provided excellent traction and control with street tires. I just need to trust some of the systems more as the hold features actually works well, once I started to trust it. You basically just apply gas as needed, the truck will stay in place and hold the brake for you (I just need to practice a bit more with it to gain more trust and understand where it won't work). So I did some left foot braking which actually seems less controlled that the computer can do. Lessons learned. Also it seems the throttle control is much better in rock crawl mode vs deep ruts or sand modes. Definitely recommended for this terrain. Will look forward to trying it out more in different areas/trails.





Continued ...........

 

Part 2

We managed to get to Gold Valley trail, but ran into a section that was too high risk without sliders and had to turn around. But not wanting to take that kind of risk with a new Disco.
Here I'm turning around.




To give some perspective I took a picture of my buddy in his Tacoma. I actually already went down that ledge and had to climb back over it. The Disco did that with no issues as there was little risk of sliding. The other section had a number of high rocks with point where you can easily slide and end up banging into another rock with a quarter panel or rocker panel or door (didn't get a good picture of it but it was pretty steep and 33 ATs with sliders would likely be the minimum to avoid damage.





Here is a little video coming back (had to go up it to get out of Gold Lake for Valley and Sunday)

Continued ......

 

Part 3

On Sunday we went over to Sierra Buttes and the fire lookout. Still plenty of snow and water/mud from the storm the previous weekend.




The views from the fire lookout were great, but I'm not a fan of heights and some the stairs were a little hairy to climb up and down.






From there we drove down to Sierra City. Again the views were excellent, but some serious brush at times which can be hard on the paint. I did coat of ceramic wax before we left and did prune some branches back, but will probably have a few pinstripes after I wash, polish and wax her again. Overall it was a fun trip and great to take her for a real test drive.

 

Very nice, good to see some new Disco's out and about. Thanks for sharing.