We were trail running with some friends in the Lehighton/Jim Thrope (PA) area back in October. Muddy as hell too. Spent two hours cleaning it afterward.
Yep, I'm a member of the JK-forum. I'm also a member of MilitaryJeepers.com and several others. MilitaryJeepers is for active duty and veterans who own Jeeps of any kind. Nice group of users.
One thing I noticed on the JK-Forum is that there are so many Jeep owners who don't know the difference between their dipstick and a tire iron. Completely, utterly devoid of mechanical knowledge. Did you see the post where a guy thought he had termites in his fiberglass top?
Then you have the knuckleheads who figure the solution to all problems is to air down their tires. One unbelievable character insisted that airing down to 2 psi was ideal from driving on snow covered trails. 2 psi??!! He's got a 3,500 lb vehicle, and 2 psi is simply flat... Great way to completely destroy the tires. Some of those guys make Forrest Gump look like a Harvard graduate. "Stupid is as stupid does, sir"
Reminds me of a guy here on Long Island. He spent over 6 grand modding the hell out of his '07 Unlimited. 4" Teraflex lift, 37" Procomps on 16" wheels and more armor than a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Two of us had to pull him out of the sand when he buried it up to the frame rails... Those Procomps moved more sand than a backhoe... Problem was, he didn't go forward; he went straight down. He had never driven on the beach before. I have doubts he had ever been off road prior to that day. We coached him on beach driving and had him turn traction control back on as he couldn't seem to avoid spinning the wheels like mad. He managed not to get buried again..
I looked at your photos and those from the Virginia group. Nice bunch of common-sense Jeepers enjoying themselves. Is that nice looking Red X yours? Seeing that stock Yellow X S24 running with the Rubicons was interesting. Considering that they still had the Goodyear SR-A rubber, they did very well.
SR-As are much better than many guys with heavily modded Jeeps will readily admit. They are certainly better in snow than any M/T tire. Self cleaning lugs are not what you want. Nothing sticks better to snow than snow. M/Ts throw snow everywhere but don't bite. The SR-As load up with snow and bite well. That is why my BFGs are in the garage and the SR-As on the Jeep for the winter. Traction control isn't much help if there's no traction to control. 
Then again, a surprising number of JK drivers switch off the ESP and traction control when it snows. This, I believe, is due to really bad advice from other Jeep owners. ESP and traction control were incorporated precisely for those types of conditions.
That's why I tell people to be careful with what they read on Jeep forums. There's as much bad info as good. One TJ owner stated that Brake Lock Differentials were just a gimmick.. The fact that a JK X model will scale any obstacle a stock TJ Rubi can because of BLD would quiet this silliness, or so you would think. TJ and YJ owners simply don't understand... the JK is a completely different animal, more capable than the previous models and more capable than any other factory stock 4x4 you can buy. I've owned a moderately upgraded YJ and a heavily modded CJ-5. I can take my stock JK nearly anywhere I could drive either of those, and do so in far more comfort.
My regards,
Widewing
The Red JK is mine. Basic X with the only options A/C, Posi, 6-Speed and Half-Doors. It really is my wife and my camping-adventure beast and will go anywhere a Rubi can and that is what we use it for. It has had a break-upgrade-wheel more type life so far. I run a basic 1.75 lift, I do a good chunk of Mud so I ditched the SRA's for a set of new BFG's from a Rubi (Gave my sister in law my 17 SRA's for her unlimited since she only had the 16's). The Diff's are up-armored (I peeled them crawling boulders), I custom fabricated welded sliders from the basic R/R Tube steps (after driving one into the pinch seam of the quarter panel walking over a log). The back seat was tossed and the seats added with the Smitty Built MolleGear backs (with everything in them). I modded the tailgate to hold the compressor, some recovery gear, come along and tire repair kit. I cut and fabricated a hi-lift mount and stronger recovery points behind the stock rear bumper. Plus, fabricated a home made sway-bar disco (here I really hate Rubi owners in freezing temps when we wheel
). I almost hydro-locked it once so I also custom fabricated a water deflector over the airbox from roof sewer pipe vent flashing and foam. The water ingress to the stock airbox is being thrown by the belt up into the hood and across not, from the bottom as allot of people think!
In the summer we ditch the top and only run the bikini and rear duster cover. The BFG's are horrible in the snow if you have to drive on a road but, on the trail in snow at about 16psi not to bad. My only "squeak" if there was one is I wish I had the Rubi's 4.1 ratio T-Case for the reduction in Low when going down very steep inclines and that it had the 4.0 Liter Straight Six. As you know, 3.8 isn't too great in higher RPM torque. Although at Quadratec's open house sale last fall I picked up a scratch-dent Voliant axle back exhaust and it really helped on hills in 5th-6th gear. Otherwise, I have pulled lots of Rubi's out where I did not get stuck! Not having the D-44 in the front (plus the D-30 is open even though I ordered posi and expected both carriers to have it) is somewhat of a drag but, the BLD more than makes up for not having E-Lockers.
Oh and plus the additional off-road lighting since the JK has poor lights as you know.
It really is a great fun vehicle for us and if I didn't have Mustangs and some other vehicles I would probably get another one. The thing is about as sure footed and go anywhere as a Mountain goat.
In a nutshell you are right on the lack of Mechanical Knowledge for a good chunk of JK owners. But, to sum it up in one word UNLIMITED is what caused that. Granted I wheel with people that have super Unlimited's and are really knowledgeable (although I like to bust balls about School Buses when they have to 3 point turns that I scoot through or get turtled on sharp drops). But, the bulk of Unlimiteds are simply Mall-Crawlers so Junior can get his under-roo's at Wally-Mart in the snow and they can feel "outdoorsy".
At a JK fest last October, we had this "outdoorsy" guy in his Unlimited Sahara join us on a trail ride. After a simple few off-camber obstacles, the guy started almost crying about "rolling" over and "killing his kids". I was almost comical and we were only running an easy green. He made the entire group back-track out of the trails so he could go home (we wouldn't leave him alone).
When you get a chance check out the trails and tales section of JK forum on Sunday after we do this ride on Saturday. My wife (JnRstel) is the defacto photo-video nut that makes awesome videos and photos of all our rides.
Hope to see you out on the trails!
After swimming this:
This simple mod keeps water out of your airbox
here is mine going through that simple obstacle where the guy started freaking out
