Sunday, February 9, 2003

I had received an email from Jeremy and Maliya from Ferndale, WA; they had read the Vedder Ridge trip report, and had asked for directions to the trailhead. Jeremy rode a Polaris 700, and Maliya rode a Polaris 400. I sent them an email back saying that Dave and I were actually heading there this weekend for some technical trail riding, and that they were welcome to join us. We made arrangements to meet at a Tim Hortons in Sardis; they ended up arriving an hour early because they weren't sure how busy the border would be.

When Dave and I rolled into the parking lot at the crack of 09:00h, we were a bit worried when we saw that they had only brought Jeremy's 700; we knew that the trails we wanted to check out were quite difficult, with a lot of off-camber sections and steep grades, and we were thinking that Maliya would be walking over a lot of the trail. Jeremy soon showed that he was an experienced rider; he was able to traverse the off-camber sections and negotiate the tight spots with Maliya on the back; she only got off for a couple of sections. Dave and I showed them the tough trails we'd found last weekend, and found some new stuff again, just as technical as the last ones.

We started off on a little shelf road that Dave and I found last week; it wound around the mountain beneath the cell site and dropped us out on the main road. We then took the road up to the cell site, and made our way towards the trench trail from the previous Vedder Ridge trip.

The above photos show Jeremy without a helmet; he took it off while Dave and I negotiated the trench, and set it down further up the trail. This was the only time he was not wearing a helmet, and we were riding very slowly here.

The trench trail was a lot drier this time, which really surprised Dave and I, and it seemed a lot easier. After introducing Jeremy and Maliya to the first "tough" obstacle of the day, we then headed for the two loops that Dave and I found last week. However, the only trail in was blocked by the biggest, baddest, lime-greenest full-size Blazer that I'd ever seen. It was running 44" Boggers, and had an old-school mondo-leaf lift. The driver had driven into a ravine the night before, and was attempting to drain the gas and oil from his cylinders. He informed us that his friends were on the way up to assist him, so we decided to check out a few other trails and come back later. Most of the other trails were easy, and after about an hour we headed back to the loop access road. The Blazer was still across the trail, but they had succeeded in moving it a bit and we were able to get by.

The first loop was really short; just a quick jaunt into the bush, then up an off-camber slope that Dave and I had a really difficult time with last week. Dave had a minor difficulty this time as well, getting a tire way into the air, but he recovered and was able to claw his way up to the top. Jeremy was next; he got Maliya to exit the quad, and just powered his way up, making it look easy. I tried powering up, and was doing really well, but then I started going off-camber to the right and let off the gas, and stalled the engine. I contemplated my situation for a minute while Jeremy snapped a photo, then hit the starter button. Due to the severe angle, the gas had ran out of the float bowl and I couldn't restart. Dave and Jeremy pushed down on the quad to "level" it, which allowed me to restart, and I was able to make it up after a couple attempts. After the climb, we squeezed through some closely-spaced trees, took a couple off-camber side-slopes, then hit a two-foot drop back to the main trail.

The second loop was the toughest trail that we'd found so far; and I freely admit that I was quite nervous in numerous spots when I was running it last time. This time it wasn't so bad; as I get more seat-time in, I guess I'll be less worried about the terrain. The trail narrowed quickly, and we were once again squeezing between the trees, traversing off-camber side slopes, and climbing up steep, deeply-V'd hills. The loop was actually quite uneventful with no real difficultes, and Jeremy and Maliya worked really well together. The loop returned to the exact spot where we had started, and once we were back on the main trail, Dave decided to head across to a new trail that we'd seen but not taken.

This trail turned out to be another good one; lots of tight twists, and branch trails running off in all directions. Some looped back, and some got too narrow for our quads. We played around in this area for about an hour, and only got temporarily disoriented once.

On one trail, there was a rock sticking out from the ground near the top of a steep ascent; I was last in the group and didn't see the line the others took, so I tried climbing over the rock. Big mistake; the front end of my quad went way up in the air, and I was hanging on to the handlebars for dear life trying not to fall off. "Help!" I called into the microphone. Dave and Jeremy came trotting down the hill; Jeremy took a photo first (thanks, bud! haha) then Dave got me backed down off the rock and into a more horizontal position. I rode around the rock, hanging my butt off the side of the quad for balance, and made it up. Okay, that wasn't too bad.

About an hour later, on the way back down, Jeremy, with Maliya on the back, was zipping along the trail, rode over the edge of the descent, hit the rock at speed and bounced BOTH rear tires in the air about a foot and a half, getting quite vertical; I thought for SURE they were going over and had visions of a real ugly scene involving a rescue chopper, then he instinctively gave it some gas and the front wheels pulled him forward, bringing the rear tires back down. Wow! Gotta remember about that rock for future reference.

It was getting late, and since Jeremy and Maliya had to cross the border to get home, we decided to call it a day. On the main road, we got passed by a couple of dirt-bikers who were hauling along at a good clip. We took a short-cut trail over the mountain, and after bumping over a lot of rocks, we arrived back at the ring road that circled the mountain. While we were pulled over at an intersection chatting about the day, the bikers rode up from behind us and gave us a really confused look, wondering how the heck we had gotten in front of them. :) An RCMP 4x4 approached, and slowed down to check us out; I was facing away from them and didn't see them until they were slowing down in front of us. Dave said they were staring pretty hard at us, but we exchanged waves and they didn't stop. We were thinking that that would be a neat job to have, getting paid to take a company 4x4 out on the trails. "Yeah, we're taking the Tahoe up Vedder to, uh, make sure that, uh, nobody's drinking in public!" or something similar. :)

While pressure-washing the quad, I noticed that I'd popped out a few more plastic rivets on the fender flares from squeezing between the trees, and I broke a couple welds on the left side of my front rack (I think that was when I struck a rather large tree in a tight corner). Time for that new bumper I think. The weather was excellent; quite foggy at times, with a lot of blue sky in between. This was the first weekend out of the last four weekends that I didn't finish up with wet gloves and socks. As usual, the new trail taught me more things, and I had a great time.

I've also included the following photos from LAST WEEK'S trip; it was just Dave and I exploring Vedder Ridge, along the same trails as in this trip, so rather than write another trip report about the same trails, I'm just posting them here. They're pretty dark because they were taken in the forest just before and after sunset, but they do show the type of terrain quite well.

Photos by Dave, Greg, and Jeremy.

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