Corn Creek February 2022 driving Mormonwell Road
A track that we tried to drive in a rental car nine years ago. Not wanting to be defeated by a road, I finally got around to taking my truck over to Vegas to do a mini road trip. Before we started the road trip, task one to conquer Mormonwell Road. Not a particularly difficult track, but you do need high ground clearance.
Now, when I searched for the track, the first thing that popped up was that if you breakdown in the summer, you're dead. I've included the screenshot of that article. It does refer to Alamo Road which is the first part of the track before we turn left onto Mormonwell Road. Also, it wasn't summer, but still, a pretty good warning and perhaps one that should have been considered a bit more carefully.
The track itself is interesting, but does become a bit samey after a time. The challenge, however, is that we had a puncture 21 miles into the journey. The signs say the road is 47 miles long, but Google only tracks it as 43 and we only tracked it at 43. Regardless, we ended up with a puncture half way along the track without any mobile phone reception. The initial check of the tire after the warning light came on wasn't bad and the handling hadn't been affected. We carried on for a bit until I could pull off the road. The first attempt to fix the problem was to pump it up and see if we could make it to the end with a few stops to top up with air. The assumed a slow puncture which it may have been to start with, but it soon got faster, so that was a no go. The second solution was to use a can of fix it stuff. It appears I left the can at home in the car, so that went out the cat flap. OK, no options left other than to change the tire.
Problem 1 - where is the jack and how to I get it out? No worries, read the manual. Well, the manual appears to be for a different model of truck. The jack is actually behind the back seats against the bulkhead. There's a kind up square created by a piece of metal that the jack slides into. The jack is then wound up a little bit so it lodges into place. Presumably to stop it rattling, which is great, but it took quite some time to figure out how it came out.
Problem 2 - how to get the spare tire off the truck. It's below the truck bed on a chain. There's some tools with the jack that you can put together to slot into a hole from the rear of the truck. This is then turned to lower the tire from where it can be removed. It sounds easy, but it took several looks under the truck to figure out how it actually worked, then a lot of poking as the chain had become lodged in the lug nut holes so it wasn't fully lowering the tire.
Problem 3 - after removing the spare tire, time to loosen the lug nuts on the punctured wheel. The lug nuts appear to have been over tightened and the tire iron's handle is only 18-24 inches long, so there's not enough leverage to get the nuts off. Neither Owen or I were able to exert enough pressure onto the tire iron to remove the nuts. I finally came up with the solution to use the truck's weight to help. Rather than push down on the tire iron, I rotated it 180 degrees and used the jack to push the end of the iron up. I figured this would result in one of three things happening - either a) the nut would undo, b) the tire iron would slip and go flying off or c) the truck would lift up being balanced on a tire iron on top of a jack. If c, then there's no way the nuts are coming off. I did thing b most likely, but it actually worked if only really slow. I got four of the nuts off before someone came by on a motorcycle and helped. He was able to jump on the tire iron to get the last two off.
Problem 4 - the jack itself is designed for a car. On a level ground, it would probably be able to get the truck high enough to change the tire, however, with the ground being not quite solid, the first attempt didn't raise it high enough. We had to put the punctured tire back on, lower the truck, find a flat stone and then raise it again.
Eventually repairs were completed and the journey continued. We completed without further incident, but it did make me reflect on what I would take if doing a similar journey again. We did take plenty of water and some food. I think I would add a personal locator beacon (PLB) that can be used to send an SOS message if you're really stuck. I'd probably add a tow rope and a lighter just in case either were needed.
Slideshow
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Images
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Geotagged Image Map
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Videos
If you're really bored, there is a full length video of the track (camera was turned off during the repairs). Not sure you'll even be able to download this, but if you want to try: Full version (5.8Gb .MP4 file download, Length 02:58:57)