Sunday, January 19, 2003

Finally found some time to ride! The object was to try to find a route that went from Harrison Lake to Hemlock Mtn. We had all been in the area previously, checking out the first part of the trail and others. The weather was cloudy with a bit of light drizzle. We made a beeline for the trailhead, a rough offshoot from a well-established logging road. We hit rocks right away; I shifted into 4-lo and bumped my quad up the steps. The quads had no trouble here, but the trucks were a bit slower. The open-diffed Toy had to pick a good line, and the Rubicon with its factory lockers just walked up like it was nothing. Our quads had a lot more speed on the tight trails, so we went on ahead once the trucks had cleared the first rocks. We stopped at one point to clear some deadfall with Dave's chainsaw, which allowed the trucks to catch up to us.

We took a branch that we thought was the right trail, but it suddenly started looking very unfamiliar, so we turned around. We took a few other trails, noticing a neat little track the dropped down about 5 feet from the main road wound into the forest. Something to remember for later! We eventually found the trail we were looking for, and started winding our way up the mountain. Creeks had washed out the trail in several spots, so we had a good time 3-wheeling it through the rougher sections. One washout consisted of a climb up to a 2-foot dia log which held the road up; Dave was ahead of us and I didn't see the line he picked. I took several attempts in double-4-lo and finally climbed it with a couple of well-placed rocks. Yasu hit it a bit too fast and launched his Honda 350 almost 90 degrees as Dave snapped a photo. A second, less-exuberant attempt got him over it. The Toy made it up after a few attempts and a few rocks stacked; the Rubicon just clicked on the lockers and slowly crawled it on the first attempt, without even spinning a tire.

A few more washouts and narrow sections of trail, and we reached the lookout where we stopped for lunch (Tim Hortons sandwich for me!). We soon arrived at the snow line; our quads had no trouble traversing an off-camber, snow-covered shelf road, but the Toy started sliding sideways and down towards the abyss, so he wisely stopped and got out to assess the situation. We hauled out our shovels and dug tracks in the snow to rail his tires straight back; that worked like a charm, and he was able to back out to the dirt section without incident. The Toy and Jeep got parked, and we continued up the trail on the quads. A very short time later, we came to a huge washout; it was about 30 feet across, and about 6 feet deep on our side, and about 15 feet deep on the other side (uphill trail, right?). A waterfall cascaded down from the cliff, flowed across where the trail used to be, and ran off down the embankment. Deadfall was placed on the far side like a steep wood ramp to facilitate getting quads up the other side. Dave took his quad down the steep decline into the creek, crossed it, then attempted to climb up the deadfall. Nope, it was just too slippery, and if he slid off, he'd roll off to the right and down the cliff. Several of us grabbed onto the quad to steady it, and Dave strung the winch cable up to a tree. He winched his quad up the wood ramp with no trouble, then was able to ride the rest of the way up; a tight squeeze around a corner and past a tree even with a quad. We decided to hike up further to see what the rest of the trail was like.

Further up, and just around a corner, the same creek had washed out a longer portion of the road. Big boulders, deadfall, and water-carved passages through the rocky soil meant that we weren't getting past this section! We hiked further up the trail; we had a GPS with us so that we'd be able to see if this trail looked like it was heading towards the trail we knew of on the other side. We split up, checked out a couple of branches, and determined that this trail headed off in the wrong direction to be the link trail that we were seeking. Oh well! Dave and I headed back down to the quads and waited for the others, who ended up hiking another 45 minutes up the trail to another lookout. I managed to loose my footing, and fell 4 feet down into the creek, banging my left knee on a large rock in the process. Ow! Further on down the trail, I slipped on a wet, leaf-covered, algae-coated rock, and *splash* down I went again. I was wearing a pair of Gore-Tex pants over my jeans, and I could feel the water flowing past me as I sat in the creek. However, the pants worked as advertised, and when I got out my jeans were completely dry. And my Gore-Tex jacket kept my shirt, pull-over, and two-way radio dry. However, my boots and gloves were completely soaked. Once back at the quads, I wrung my gloves out and Dave flicked on his heated grips. We placed my gloves on the grips, and after a while they were warm and almost dry. Dave wanted to get a photo of the depth of the washout, so I climbed down towards the waterfall for a height comparison. Guess what? Yep, I slipped on a wet rock again, and my gloves were once again sopping. I think I need new boots!

The fog was rolling in and the daylight was starting to fade, so the trucks decided to head out. Dave, Yasu, and I decided to stay out and play for a while longer, as we still had plenty of fuel, so we split up, and the quads headed for the little trail in the forest that we spotted earlier. That trail turned out to be a cool little track that wound through the trees, dropped into a creek, then emerged at a little camp site. Short, but entertaining. The sun disappeared behind the mountains, leaving us in darkness except for our headlights. This was my first night run, and I noticed that my headlights were pointed too low, and didn't illuminate much more than 4 feet in front of me. When we emerged onto the main road and got up to cruising speed, I decided that was overdriving my lights too much, so we stopped and adjusted them higher. What a difference, I could see! We also took this opportunity to move Dave's bright-orange Stihl chainsaw case from in front of his upper headlight to my back rack; he was getting too much glare and couldn't see properly. We zoomed off down the trail, and headed for one of the nearby lakes. We checked out the entire area; I had been here a few times in the past, but it looked quite different in the dark with our relatively low-powered lights. Dave started down one trail, then realized it was a camp site at the edge of the lake and the "puddle" he was in just kept getting deeper! We found a nice rocky face to test our climbing skills on; I almost rolled my quad when I got a tire too high in the air, and none of us were able to make it up the slippery rocks. But it looked so easy! We left the lake area, and got onto a powerline access road. We spent a couple hours wandering around the network of trails through some fairly thick brush, and after having to reverse several times at dead-ends I decided that I needed some sort of reverse light on a switch. Stuff you don't think of during the day. It was getting late now, so we decided to call it a day. On the way back to tour tow rigs, Dave ran out of gas, and switched over to his reserve tank. We had dinner at WhiteSpot in Maple Ridge (excellent service); we had the only vehicles in the parking lot, which was good as our turning radius sucked with our trailers.

An excellent day of trail-riding. Very sore muscles; I have to do this more often!

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