Sunday July 9, 2000

I've been doing so much 'wheeling lately, I haven't had time to write any trip reports. But that's a good thing! :) Anyways, I posted this trip as "suitable for near-stock vehicles; 31" tires and a slight lift are recommended". All the Toys were locked front and rear, and both TJ's had coil-spacer lifts and rear LSD's. Everyone figured we were over-qualified for a simple "stock" run.

The day started off in typical 4-wheeler fashion; Barry mis-read my email and arrived at the RV point an hour early. I got stuck in traffic due to an accident on the Port Mann Bridge, and arrived 45 minutes late. Our target was the Lougheed Hwy - Ruby Creek FSR; the trailhead is approximately 9 km's north of Seabird Island Road on Lougheed Hwy, between Agassiz and Hope. We aired down, locked in the hubs, and headed up the trail in the morning sun. We observed that there were a lot of new logging cuts in the area, and I checked out a couple of them looking for an old road from a previous trip.

We turned right off the mainline about 3 km's from the trailhead, and crawled up a steep gas pipeline road. I thought that the LSD-equipped Jeeps might experience some difficulty here, but they just crawled right up without even spinning a tire. The road splits at the top; the right fork led to an overgrown section followed by an even steeper climb visible from our location; we took the left fork which wound down and met up with a powerline road. We turned left, and found ourselves back at the mainline. We turned right from here, and headed north.

The mainline soon split; the left fork led to Sasquatch Provincial Park, and the right fork climbed into the hills. We went right, then took an overgrown trail to the left about 1 km later. If you take this road (the Ruby - Mahood FSR), be VERY CAREFUL as there is a large, 6' deep straight-down undermine right at the start of the road, positioned just perfectly to drop your truck onto it's nose if you don't see it. I stopped about an inch away from the crumbling edge; I didn't see the drop as my attention was diverted by a low-hanging branch, but I stopped because I couldn't see the road. *whew* I slowly and gingerly backed up, taking care to not roll forward when I pushed the clutch in, and exited the cab to survey the road. Fortunately, there was enough room for us to squeeze by on the right side.

We encountered a small washout (or a large dip, depending on your point of view); the left side would put you in a rocky hole half the size of a Jeep, and the right side would put you off-camber above the hole. Everyone chose the left, more difficult, side. The locked Toys made it through; both TJ's spun their tires and got dangerously close to the left edge of the road and the accompanying drop off, so they were both tugged out. The less-articulate vehicles got tires in the air; Doug and I had no problem.

We then arrived at a good-sized washed-out section; during what must have been a torrential rainstorm, a large creek washed down a hillside, depositing dirt, sand, rocks, and trees over the road. I got out to walk the area before driving on it; the last thing I needed was the loose soil collapsing under the weight of my truck. Recovery from a 200' chasm would have been ugly with our 125' winch cables. The start of the washout required climbing over some debris, getting on top of the deposited soil, then heading in towards the base of the cliff where the creek was the shallowest, turning hard left, driving through the creek around a large log, up the other bank, driving over more of the deposited soil, then back into the forest on the original trail.

I drove my truck up onto the deposited soil, then manoevered into the depression. A large log was lying there; I got my rear tires up onto it and then suddenly slid 3' sideways to the left. The back tires slid off the log, and the truck came to rest with the left rear corner of the box sitting on the log, crumpling in the corner. Doh! I tried driving off the log, to no avail. The log had hung me up, and the soil was too loose for the other three tires to get traction. Reversing would have crushed my exhaust pipe, and driving forward just slid the front end over to the left. I decided to get one of my Jack-Alls to try to lift the rear bumper up off the log; I was unable to open my swing-away tire carrier as it hit the up-sloped ground, so I had to squeeze myself in through the rear window, which was blocked from opening fully by the tire carrier. Once I had the jack out, I was unable to jack the truck up because the long handle of the jack contacted the ground. Hmm. I guess I had to winch forward, which of course would cause some more damage to the box. Oh well. I attached the winch cable to my tree saver strap and a near-by tree; a quick winch session and I was off the log. I got out to survey the damage; the bottom edge of the box was crushed and the quarter panel was starting to separate from the rest of the box. Funny thing; for the last several weeks, I had been wrestling with the idea of cutting off that portion of the box anyways, and running some bumper extensions along the cut line to prevent this very thing from happening. But I was loath to butcher a perfect box... I guess it doesn't matter now! :) Maybe my drop-link shackles would have helped here, but alas, they won't be ready for another two weeks...

Since I had shown everyone the line not to take, they all backed into the approach so that they'd be able to take a straighter line than mine. Of course, nobody else had any problems. Doug was last, and he wanted me to spot him into the same line as the one I took, to show off the added protection his TrailMax rear bumper extensions gave him. Sure enough, the bumper extension had no problem carrying the weight of the truck, and easily protected his rear quarter panel. But guess what? Now he was hung up on the log just like I was; there was nothing his lockers, Marlin Crawler, and 35" tires could do. Spool out the winch cable! :)

We headed back into the forest. Some of the participants started complaining of hunger pangs to the trip leader (me), so I stopped at a fork in the road to give everyone a break. We hauled out our folding chairs and everyone had lunch, including the mosquitos. After everyone had eaten their fill, including the mosquitos, we took the upper road which headed towards Slollicum Peak. It was a steady climb, very overgrown and covered with deadfall. Once again we had no chainsaw, so after partially cutting through the thicker logs (which pinched the blades of our bow saws and made it difficult to cut all the way through), we hooked one of my long recovery chains to the logs and my front bumper, and I backed up to break the logs the rest of the way through and pulled them off the trail. TJ John had a nice accessory; he brought along a pair of long-handled pruning shears with curved blades; these worked great to grab and trim branches of up to 2" in diameter. These were much quicker and had a longer reach than bow saws and machetes, and I made a mental note to add a set to my equipment list.

We spent a few more hours on this road, hacking our way through the deadfall, and only travelled a couple more kilometers. We finally had enough, and decided to turn around. Nobody had any problems on the way down, and we arrived back at the Ruby mainline in short order. Doug was in the lead, and decided to take us on part of a previous TORR (the Thurston Off-Road Rally put on by the Lionsgaters) route.

We soon took a branch off the Ruby mainline, and found ourselves on a powerline access road. We checked out some of smaller off-shoots, but they turned out to be extremely overgrown. We could barely make out the road in some places. The main powerline road wound around under the towers, and dropped down towards a creek with a well-built bridge over what might have been Ruby Creek. It then headed back up and we soon found ourselves under a tower with a large drop-off. End of the road. Doug said he was sure the road actually went through, and that we must have missed a turn-off somewhere. Doug and I turned around at the tower, and the rest of the vehicles turned around at a wide spot on the road. We headed back to try to find the turn-off. After checking all the side roads all the way back to the bridge, Doug said we still must have missed it, as he remembered doing extensive contruction on the bridge during the rally preparations a few years ago. He was determined to find the road, so he headed back while the rest of us took a break at the bridge. I grabbed my VHF handheld so I could hear if Doug was calling us.

At one point he got out on foot to check out a path; we could tell in his voice that he was getting frustrated because he knew the darn road was around there "somewhere"... Finally he called back; he had found the road! It turned out to be located in the "wide spot" that most of the group had turned around in... who knew! We headed back up the trail, and Doug led us down the winding powerline road to a steep, off-camber drop into Garnet Creek.

Garnet Creek was almost 100' across, and looked to be about 4' deep in some sections. The bottom was littered with large boulders and medium-sized rocks, and the current was flowing pretty good. Some of the group was apprehensive about crossing; Doug said "We took stock F-150's across this a couple of years ago!". Hmm. Dave was near stock height with 32" tires, and the Jeeps only had 2" spacer lifts and 31" and 32" tires... We decided to run winch lines across the creek, in the event somebody hydro-locked an engine or drowned a distributor and needed to be winched out. Doug went across first, with my winch cable attached to his rear bumper. He didn't have any problems, although the water was well over his 35" tires in some places. In the middle of the creek, his phone rang. It was our friend Jud, who was stranded in Maple Ridge with a dead 4Runner. "Um, I'm a little busy right now!" said Doug. Once across, Doug turned around so his truck was facing mine, attached his winch cable to mine, and I winched his cable across to our side of the creek.

Barry was next; I think he was a bit nervous but TJ John said "I'll be right behind you!" so he decided to go for it. We hooked my winch cable to his rear bumper, and sent him across. Doug was spotting him and calling out instructions via his VHF handheld; he took a slightly different line than what Doug suggested, tried to climb a large boulder, and at one point managed to float the Jeep in the current. A couple of attempts, a couple different lines, and was finally across. No real problems though, and his feet only got a bit wet. He had a big grin on his face when he was done; not sure if it was from the satisfaction of conquering the obstacle, or from relief that he made it across. :)

Dave was next; Doug spotted him across as well, but he was having some difficulty with his clutch, and his IFS just didn't give him the droop he required in some places. We had to winch him back on one occasion. When he was around 2/3 of the way across, attempting to gain some traction on a large rock, we heard a loud *CRACK* and Doug yelled at him to cut the engine. Doug figured that he had broken a CV joint, so he winched him out of the creek. A quick inspection showed that his right front CV joint had grenaded, and that he had broken the right front shock at the lower eye as well. Dave got started on jacking up his truck for the trail repair, and we sent John across next because he was a mechanic and his assistance on the other side would help speed the repair process. John found the same boulder that everyone else hit, but made it across with some work and some spotting from Doug, and started helping Dave to remove the CV joint. During all this, a constant stream of water flowed out from holes in Dave's truck's floor; apparently his cab got slightly flooded while he was crossing the creek.

TJ John decided that the creek crossing wasn't for him, citing smaller tires than Barry and driver inexperience. We made arrangements to meet him back at the trailhead off the Lougheed Highway, while I temporarily relocated my air intake towards the rear of the engine compartment for the crossing. I started across as Doug pulled my winch cable in by hand. The entrance to the creek was quite off-camber, but I knew from experience that the truck would have to lean a whole lot more before it was close to rolling. The back end slid over a bit as I came off a rock, then I was into the water. I paid strict attention to Doug's spotting directions, and had absolutely no problem crossing the creek. I didn't contact a single rock, much to my surprise. At one point, my instinct was to turn right, but Doug said to turn left towards a large 3' diameter rock, then straighten out. Apparently, if I had turned right, I would have hit the boulder that everyone else tried to drive over. Doug commented that I was the only one to listen to his directions.

Dave, Doug, and John quickly removed the broken CV assembly and shock, and we were on the way once again, with Dave in 3wd. The road climbed back up, and eventually met up with the American Creek FSR. We turned right, and headed down the road towards Lougheed Hwy in the growing dusk. We slowed down for a white car that was travelling up the road; the driver stopped me asked where we came from. He was amazed that we were able to cross the creek, and didn't even know that a road existed on the other side. We arrived at Lougheed Hwy in short order, and drove about 15 km's down the road to meet up with TJ John. Some of us aired up at the side of the Hwy with Barry's CO2 bottle (until it froze up), then we headed to Agassiz for gas and air. Dave's truck was still dripping water from the cab. :(

We decided to have dinner at the Boston Pizza in Maple Ridge; so I phoned Jud to see if he had gotten his 4Runner started yet. Nope, so we zipped over to his place to help him out. John and Trish headed for home as Trish had to be up at 05:00h the next day for work. Jud's problem turned out to be a flakey fuel pump, and after a few whacks we got it going. Who says nobody makes house calls anymore?! Jud joined us at BP, where we suddenly noticed that we were short one Jeep. Apparently, Barry's CB was malfunctioning, and he missed the radio transmission and the turnoff to Jud's and had gone on to BP by himself. When we didn't show up after 10 minutes, he decided he was too hungry to wait and grabbed a burger from Burger King. Too bad, as we weren't much longer than that. During dinner, we joked about how a solid-axle conversion would solve all of Dave's problems, and that good thing this was only a "stock" run! :)

The next day, I picked up a "warranty" shock for Dave after work, and brought it over to Doug's shop where he and Dave had just finished installing a new rear diff gasket, and were just starting to replace the CV joint. Despite the damage, a good time was had by all.

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