Dave, that photo was just in front of the mountain range next to the VFW that housed the Patton tank. The Missile Launcher would be a little further out by about 10 miles, but after 2 hours playing around I had to go home for dad duties, doodies.....
No cage required when airing back up from a trail. Once the bead is set at initial fill from a tube/tire change, everything is safe. After doing several tires now and even cutting one off a rusted rim (that took 4 hours) one is able to really understand the construction of the lock ring design and the physics involved with that tire bead. The key features here being the lock ring is a girthy 2 inches deep (or wide) and the beefy construction of the bead itself. Which is comprised of rubber encasing what equates to steel winching cable but much thicker strands. Simply put, the bead acts as a very stiff braided steel CLAMP that once around the locking rings inner surface, keeps the locking ring from spreading open and flying off. The bead is not able to really stretch in circumference but is obviously very flexible torsionally such as when breaking it down with a duckbill or bead machine.
It's funny to hear you talk about wanting to come down because we are looking so hard at going up. Maybe we will cross path's someway and find an equilibrium. There's some old mines here i've been itching to go exploring more. Last time we had the kids with us which meant photo shoots no deeper than mine entrances at most. They're wonderful, dark, chilly time capsules. The government and BLM have been slowly closing them up by dumping concrete in the entrances. Kinda sad, I'd like to see more of them preserved even with the inherent dangers of exploration involved. Anything worth doing will have risk.
Last day working for the CooCoo Pah tribe is tomorrow. So we've got some fingering out to do because the bills and life never stop.