Sunday, January 26, 2003

Yeah, I know, I'm getting desperate for trip-report titles... :)

Friday's weather report said "heavy rain in the morning, tapering to showers in the afternoon" for Sunday. That, in conjunction with the rainstorm we had Saturday night, made me worried that Sunday's ATV trip might be a washout. 06:00h comes damn early, way earlier than my usual rising time of 08:00h for work. It was still raining, but not nearly as hard as it was during the night. Ah well, ATVing in the rain is better than sitting at home watching the Superbowl or surfing the 'net.

Dave, Yasu, August, and I headed east from our respective houses and met up in Mission for fuel (59.9/litre, as opposed to 76.9 in town). Then across the street to Tim Hortons to buy sandwiches and TimBits for lunch. We finally arrived at the parking lot at the trailhead at 09:00h, where we met up with Jud, Chris, and Kai.

I dropped my folding gate/ramp, and instead of the usual "clank" as it hit the gravel, I heard a softer "clunk". Looking down, I saw that the gate was resting on a little black nylon pouch. I checked it out; inside was a blue-handled Leatherman tool. Cool! Oh wait, I think somebody had one of these when we were here last weekend, and Yasu WAS parked in this exact spot at that time... "Uh, did anyone lose a Leatherman tool last week?" I asked. Yasu asked, "Is it blue??" It turned out that it fell off his belt last weekend, and he had forgotten all about it. I was amazed that nobody had found it during the week, and Yasu was pleased that it was recovered.

The trucks took off ahead of us, knowing that we'd be able to catch up in short order. Then Yasu started looking very worried. "Oh no, where's my key??" Frantic searching of all pockets. Cursing. He then realized exactly where his quad key was; in his Jeep, over at Dave's house, sitting next to all the recovery gear he had just purchased for this trip. Doh!

I asked, "Can you hotwire it?". Yasu started dismantling his ignition as the rest of us loaded our gear onto our quads. After a few minutes, he wandered over and asked "Do you have any wire?" I gave him a short section of 14ga that I just happened to have in my electrical and fuse kit. He went back to his quad, and a couple seconds later we heard "*Vroom* - Whoooo!" as he successfully got it started. I then gave him a couple of crimp connectors so that he'd be able to disconnect it when stopped. During this time, a 4Runner, a Toyota pickup, and an S10 zoomed by; they did the classic "hit the brakes!" and pulled into the parking lot. It was Jason from our Toyota group in the 4Runner, out scouting the trails with some friends. We had a quick chat, and they zoomed off.

We were finally ready, and we headed for the same trails as last week. Harrison West FSR, then left at the Weaver Lake road. We hit the rocky trail right away, or at least, Yasu "hit the trail" right away. I was ahead of him, so I didn't see exactly what happened, but Dave, who was right behind him, watched Yasu get vertical real quick on the steps, realized what was about to happen, and started yelling at him to bail and get out of the way. Wham! Crash. Yasu's quad went over backwards, and when the handlebars hit the ground, it smashed the display console, broke the cowling, destroyed the LCD display, and scraped and tweaked the levers and other bolt-ons. Whoops. Yasu managed to get out of the way, and was not injured. Not bad for the first five minutes!

We quickly caught up to the trucks, who were attempting to scale the log at the exit to the creek crossing. Chris' open-diffed Toyota was making a valiant effort, but he wasn't being too successful. Dave and Yasu rode down the creek, which was much deeper, wider, and faster-flowing than we had seen it before, and went up a little path back to the main trail. They hooked Kai's beachline to Dave's quad, and Dave attempted to tug Chris up and over the log. Almost, but not quite! After several attempts, Dave decided to winch the Toy out. That must have been too much for the Toy, because Chris gave it some gas, found the perfect line, and roared up, out, and over the log, almost running over Dave's quad in the process. Kai made it up without fanfare of course, and then it was Jud's turn. Jud, always a crowd-pleaser, gave it a couple of attempts, then he too found the right line, and roared to the top, tires spinning and metal parts banging.

Due to the recent rain, a lot of the trails were now covered in water; it was streaming over large portions of the trails, carving out miniature canyons when it found soft dirt. Some of the actual creek crossings were DEEP, for a quad anyways. Swollen creeks, foaming whitewater, crashing down the cliffs, roaring across the road, and rushing off over the edge. Rocks were moving under the water, and debris from broken trees was floating and downstream. Water was well above the floorboards, flowing through our quads and shooting through the holes in our rims. I learned very quickly to lift my feet up while crossing, when the cold water soaked my socks. In a couple of locations, we stopped to trench the trail with our shovels, as the free-flowing water cascading over it was getting a little too unruly and would have taken out the trail if left to its own devices; the trenching and lining with rocks allowed the water to flow directly over the edge in a straight line instead of spreading out over the surface and eroding a large section of the trail. Jud tossed an ATV-tire-sized rock into one creek; it splashed into the water, never hit the bottom, and was carried off downstream. We turned around at that point! This creek crossing was located before the ravine we stopped at last week, which was too bad because we really wanted to see what it looked like. The sun had managed to peek through the clouds by this time, and we were happy that it wasn't pouring like the forecast had promised.

At this point, those on quads left those in trucks to their own devices. The four of us headed back down the trail; we encountered a family of ATVers riding red Polaris quads at the log and creek crossing; one of the kids had the tiniest, cutest quad that I'd ever seen. We checked out a couple of interesting side roads, then finally arrived back on the main road, where we found Jud who was checking under his truck for the source of some banging that he had heard. We determined that it wasn't anything serious or obvious, and decided that we'd head to a trail that I had found a couple weeks ago which lead down to a beach. Jud informed us that that particular beach was an old logging camp; I think he said it was called 10-Mile Bay. We headed down the trail, and arrived at the beach where we played around for short while. We took an alternate route out, and were soon back on the main road. Our next destination was the beach at Hale Creek; we headed down the rough road and encountered the Toyota pickup and S-10 that had stopped earlier. Jason's 4Runner was nowhere in sight, so I figured that he was already out or was just behind them. We encountered Jason around the next corner; he was pulled off to the side, hood up, tools out, 4Runner dead. August and I stopped to assist while Dave and Yasu continued on. It was turning over, and he was getting spark; that left fuel delivery. I got Jason to tap the fuel filter a few timed and turn it over; still no start. Possibly the fuel pump? I had a spare Toyota pump back at the truck, but I decided to try whacking the fuel tank first in case the pump was in a dead spot. August tried kicking the tank, but his boots were fairly "soft", so I gave it a few swift kicks with my steel-toed boots. Jason turned it over, and after a couple seconds of cranking, the engine fired right up. Whoo-hoo! Jason said he'd be picking up a new pump in short order.

The road down was very steep and quite rough; I had the quad on three wheels a few times, and I was actually quite nervous on one spot where the left front and right rear tires were in the air, and I was hanging off the right side of the quad to stop from rolling onto the left side. Holy crap! August, already through that section, gave me the thumbs-up for encouragement, and I was quite relieved when I made it through. "That was neat!" I said, as I pulled up to him.

We finally arrived at the beach, where Dave and Yasu had a fire going at the shelter. We dried our gloves and gear, and rested our sore muscles while we had a bite to eat. After about 30 minutes, we played around on the beach and the surrounding trails, then took the alternate route out. Instead of a steep, rocky climb, we had a fairly easy switchbacked road. Much better! Then we discovered that one of those fast-flowing creeks was roaring down the mountain, cutting across each of the switchbacks. The crossings weren't too deep, but the water was still over the floorboards and when it slammed into the quads it sent up a good spray. Gore-Tex is my friend!

After many creek crossings, we finally arrived back at the main road, and decided to start heading back towards our trucks, about 22 km's away. We checked out several powerline roads; some did a loop back to the main, and some just ended at a tower. Rather than take the Weaver Lake shortcut, we opted to take the mainline the entire way back. We lucked out and didn't encounter any other vehicles on the road; at one point I had the quad doing 45 MPH which is pretty much it's top speed, or at least, is the top speed at which I'm comfortable doing. :) At one corner, I missed a shift while trying to downshift to 3rd, and hit it too fast (for my ability, anyways). I quickly leaned forward and to the right, induced oversteer, and managed to drift the quad around the corner without going over the edge, pulse racing. Whew!

The sun had just set as we reached our tow vehicles, and as we were loading our quads onto our trailers, Kai and Chris pulled up in their trucks. Jud had left a note on my truck saying he had already taken off. We chatted about the trails we'd explored, then left the parking lot for home.

Another great day on the trail.

Photos by August, Dave, and Greg.

If you've been linked to this page, please check out the rest of the site!