What had happen in that bad decent event was that they ran up with the parking brake on to help activate the lsd they had in the rear. Up top, they had a hell of a time turning around, but they kept the rpm's up to get it turned. On the decent, female driving down, she had to push the gas, and hold the brake to manuever it. Then parking brake cable on one side broke, rpm's up, it started to go, her holding the brakes heated them enough that they didn't hold. Then accel cable brakes and she had no control of the rpms. Something gives underneath and rpms stay up. She did all she could do with the loss of brakes, and accelerating down the hill. That was amazing is that they were able to 'almost' walk away from the end result.
As for Lion's Back, I went up in 2001 and that was a blast. I used my 92 Bronco and it was only locked in the rear (ARB front open), 4.56's diffs, 2.71 t-case (stock), old tired 302 w/auto on 35 MTR's. Going up was like a rocket ship blast. All you see is the sky and if you look outward, everything is at a great angle. Tried to hold a soda can and it was almost vertical. My inclinometer was over 30 degrees. Surprisingly, up top, the rock gets much wider and that in itself is misleading. You never know where the 'edge' is as it's always rolling over. Lots of small wells up there and there is actually a large area to do a complete 180.
Going down, just 1st low and let it idle down, feathering brake here there to keep everything......it's like you are trying not to tear the head off the stripped bolt. Just enough to get by, but not enough to snap the head off....
I will definately participate next year in the X.