Sunday, November 4, 2001

Written Feb 23/02, so some details might be fuzzy.

Our upcoming non-denominational holiday run and dinner was fast approaching (December 1); I had to find a good trail to take everyone, so I started looking through my map book. The book showed two old trails headiong off from Hwy 7; the first went up to Deroche Mtn, and continued on to join up with the Norrish Creek mainline, which I knew from experience to be a maintained logging road. The other went from Hwy 7 to Margaret Creek Pass Rd, another maintained logging road that I was familiar with. Norrish Creek Rd joined up with Margaret Creek Pass Rd, so if I could find the two trails from Hwy 7, the route would make a nice loop, hopefully suitable for a daytrip. Mike W., a co-worker, expressed interest in riding shotgun, and Colin was willing to bring his truck out, so bright and early on Sunday we headed off east in the rain.

We eventually arrived in the town of Deroche, and after trying several small, dead-end residential roads, we finally spotted the clearly-posted street sign marked "North Deroche Road", exactly where the map book said it would be. We followed this road as it wound it's way north and east, and eventually came to the end of the road with a small wire gate on the north side. No signs were posted, so we passed through the gate, and bumped along a leaf-covered trail that soon split. Colin took the right fork, I took the left fork, and we maintained contact via VHF radio. Colin quickly reported that his trail dead-ended; mine continued on up a rise, where I could see it heading straight for a farmhouse about a kilometer away. It looked like the trail passed right through the middle of this person's property. We didn't want to disturb the land-owner, and even if we did get permission to pass through, I didn't really want to come back with a pack of 4x4's a month later, so we turned around and exited the trail. However, we were fairly certain that this trail was the one marked on the map as heading to Deroche Mtn.

We continued on eastbound on Hwy 7, and soon entered the town of Lake Errock. We turned left onto Beaudry Rd, the first road we encountered. We found several places to play around in; all were new logging cuts and dead ends, but the only two promising old roads that we saw were severely deactivated and not crossable without extensive trail modifications. One that we did try required lockers (plural!), and another dead-ended at a blockade of logs at a deep, rock-strewn, swiftly-flowing creek. This road did continue on, on the other side of the creek, but because this side was blocked, the other side was quite overgrown and rough. Definitely not for stock trucks, which was what we were setting up the run for. At the end of one new logging road, we saw a couple of large bucks nibbling at shoots; as we approached they bounded into the safety of the forest and turned to watch us as we turned our vehicles around in the soft dirt.

Traversing a ditch

We stopped for lunch by some long-abandoned logging machinery; the surounding mist and the dark trees gave the setting a rather spooky atmosphere. The rain still hadn't let up, so we sat on my tailgate beneath the (poor) shelter of my canopy door. We found a bridge that was built from two railway cars; the road continued on past but it was blocked by a huge log. We checked out every branch and offshoot that we could find, but unfortunately, we didn't find any other road that might have been the "proper" one. We exited the area via a new white gravel road that the Scowlitz Indian Band had put in for their logging operation, and found ourselves back on Hwy 7, a couple kilometers east of Beaudry Rd.

Logging machinery

We ended up doing the Hemlock to Hale Creek loop; Mike spotted and pointed out the old train trestles along the road that leads to the back of Hemlock; I'd never seen them before, and had no idea there were even tracks there at one time. Good eyes! We found a K-car that was flipped over down an embankment on the right side of the road just past Mile 9; no occupants, and fresh foot tracks. There was a bit more water in the creeks than I'd seen in the past, but nothing we couldn't handle. Lots of little side roads that I'd like to check out, given more time. We eventually joined up with the Harrison West FSR, which we followed back down to Hwy 7.

An easy and relaxing day in the mist and the rain. We didn't find what we were looking for, but we still had fun.

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