sdb777: I live close to the Rex, and have use it for 37 years. I'll give you a little history that I've been told by the folks that live and work there. It was originally a winter sled trail used during the gold rush. A part of the trail system going from Black Rapids all the way to the Lake Menchuminia area. It saw a lot of use during the heavy gold mining of the 1920s thru 50s. Seeing the use of tracked vehicles starting with Dozers, then Nodwells, and Bombadiers. They broke the top tundra covering and let the permafrost melt. Turning the trail to soup in some areas. Then over the decades the mud washed out leaving hard trail and big holes holding water about 2 foot deep with frozen bottoms. No one ran the trail after spring thaw till hunting season. The trail was an eyesore, a scar upon the land, but it at least was stable, and provided transportation. As for the Nodwells, traveling at five miles per hour, tracks 4ft wide, crawling across the mud, and only leaving cleat marks. In the 80s people started using 3 and 4 wheelers. On the good hard parts of the trail they ran along pretty fast, 25 to 30 mph. When they came to the holes, they went a lot slower. They could not push through 2 feet of water fast enough to throw water out of the hole. When the wheelers came to wet mud they would make shallow ruts, but then here would come the Nodwells flattening out the ruts and letting the mud dry. For 30 years a happy co-existence and I saw no significant change in the trail.
Then in about 1999 or 2000, restrictions were placed on unit 13, and on the Keni. People from down that way started showing up on the Rex with large tired rigs. The first tired rig I saw was an old Osh-Gosh snow plow truck, that had been stripped down to nothing but the frame and cab, then a camper set on the back. This rig had the original snowplow tires with chains all the way around. Talk about a heavy rig, and those chains were tearing up the hard surface so bad that come the least little rain it turned to soup, where it would normally drain and stay hard. Other rigs were converted military trucks, or commercial trucks stripped down. Most people used chains that tore up everything, especially the mud areas, turning them to soup. After a few of these rigs passed the trail became impassable for 4-wheelers. The holes that had hard frozen bottoms started getting deeper, with deep mud on the bottom. So to get through the big heavy rigs would hit the holes going faster. They would throw a wave of mud and water 10 to 15 feet back into the woods on each side of the trail. By the end of the hunting season the holes were considerably deeper each year. In 2003 I started crossing a hole with a 4 wheeler that for 30 years had only been 2 ft deep. Suddenly I fell over a bank and went in over 6ft.
Then F&G started the Cow Moose hunts. The number of tired rigs running the trail rapidly increased. The type of rigs also started changing. Now we were also seeing lighter type rigs with large cleated tires. The type of rigs, and the same rigs, you saw at the mud bog racing. These rigs ran much faster than the older heavier rigs. In fact one guy bragged about how he hauled two Moose from Gold King, to the highway and passed to his wife. Then drove to Nenana for lunch. Then back to Clear, refueled the rig, then back to Gold King in time for dinner at camp. He was making the 40 mile trip in 3 hours. 80 mile round trip 6 hours travel time. Each year since then the trail has progressively gotten worse. The water holes deeper and longer. The mud areas soft and soupy. The hard areas chewed up, rutted, and often wet and muddy as well. In the boggy areas the Nodwells would crawl over leaving only cleat marks, the tired rigs would tear up so bad they could not get through. So they would nake new trails around the holes they had created. In one area the new trails spread out over a half mile from the original trail on each side, knocking down trees, and tearing up the Tundra. These new trails have torn off the insulating layer of Tundra, allowing the permafrost to melt, making wet soupy quagmires everywhere.
These same rigs continue to run the trail during the freeze thaw time of freeze up. They brake through the ice on the holes and rivers, causing big slabs of ice to stand on end, and refreeze. This makes the trail hard to negotiate for snow machines, till sufficient snow falls to cover the rough ice, or one of the local miners grooms the trail. One of the conditions of his permit from DNR to use the trail, is that he will groom the trail for snow machines use after he hauls in or out any equipment. These tired rigs don't have any permits.