Over the past few months here at the garage, we’ve been rebuilding The Gavel JK into a new insane beast. With a whole new v8 motor, custom Genright cage, 40 inch sticky tires(same tires Jordan Pellegrino races on) and a few other parts, The Phoenix was born. We did some research on some off road trails and came to the conclusion that the Fordyce Trail near Tahoe would be the best shakedown trail for the new build. This trail in Northern California is known to be a very difficult trail especially this time of the year with all the snow melt and water run off. There are plenty of hard obstacles where the winch comes in handy and the river crossings can become quite deep at times. We took 5 vehicles out on this trip. The Phoenix, Grdloc, Mischief Maker, Roqtaco, and the guys from Power Tank met up with us to show us around their territory. The power Tank guys even brought along their new off road trailer and the JL did absolutely amazing towing that thing through all the obstacles. The first day on the trail, the weather was perfect and we made to a camp spot about 8 miles in. The second day got a little wet, as we woke up to hail and pouring rain. We waited a little for the weather to brighten up and then packed up camp to continue on the trail. Despite pouring rain the entire second day, we made it through to the exit road and headed back to the trailers.