David EilersJuly 21, 2023

Yakima Ridge Runners Early Jeeping Videos

UPDATE: I first posted this March 29, 2011. It includes a dialogue with my late mother, where she explains that the Naches Trail was my first jeeping excursion (it was likely 1966 and I would have been around 1 year old).

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JPZombie has posted several vintage videos on Youtube. Here are a few showing the club in the Naches Trail area west of Yakima in Washington State.

3 Comments

Tom JonesJuly 21, 2023 at 4:43 PM
My first trip over the trail was in 1968. I was a kid working on a fire crew at the old Naches Ranger Station on Chinook Pass. It was the first day of work for a brand new District Ranger. The District Recreation Staff Officer Dick, organized a trip over the trail that included him, the Ranger Bob, the District Engineer Bill, and the South Zone Engineer Jay. I was assigned to take them in my Jeep, a CJ-3A, with a 215 aluminum Oldsmobile V8. Dick rode shotgun, Bob, Bill and Jay in the back seet. I had heard from some of the ridgerunners about what they called the counter balance. You can see them hanging on the up hill side of the jeeps in the videos to keep the jeep from rolling. Back then the trail started in the little Naches at Timothy Meadows. I asked the Dick about that and he said he had never heard of such a thing. He was a local guy who had grown up in the Nile so I figured the Rigrunners had been pulling my leg. You never could tell about those guys. Jeeping storys were always embellished. Long story short. We came to the counter balance, I started across and the Jeep rolled onto its right side. No one was hurt. Dick said, "Lets set it back up before the oil runs out". We set it back up and continued on down to the Green water and returned to the ranger Station via Chinook pass. I transferred to the Wind River Ranger District on the Gifford Pinchot NF in 1974. At my going away party They made me a Cake with a toy Jeep laying on its side the top.
1. David EilersJuly 21, 2023 at 6:29 PM
  Thanks Tom. Great story! For me, as a "west-sider" growing up (now an east-sider in Prosser), the Little Naches was always the end, not the start of the trail.
David BraySeptember 30, 2024 at 6:00 PM
I was 15 and my family started the Cascade 4x4s. We came to the mud race the year Bill Stroppe showed up with four new Broncos built for racing. A guy in a CJ-5 beat them. He had better waterproofing and he was fast. I’m curious whatever happened to Skeet Trummert’s (Webfooter) M38 A1. He sold to a Ridgerunner I believe. It had a 389 Pontiac with a 4 Speed Hydramatic and a custom 50’s Buick or Olds dashboard. It was painted orange at the time. Almost 60 years later I still wonder about that Jeep.