Upper Hut Lake With Guests |
Sunday, June 4, 2000
Participants |
A couple of weeks ago, my co-worker Karl mentioned that a friend of his from Hungary named Gabor would be visiting for a few weeks. He also said that Gabor loved 4x4's, but was unable to drive due to poor vision caused by diabetes, and would I be interested in taking him on a four-wheeling trip? As I am always looking for an excuse to go 'wheeling (not that I've ever needed an excuse), I said "Sure!" and organized a trip to Upper Hut Lake.
Upper Hut Lake is located just north of Squamish, along the picturesque Sea-to-Sky Highway. The terrain is moderately-difficult, and the obstacles are mostly exposed rock faces forming ledges and V's. Everyone in the group had at least one locker (except Mark with his factory "un"limited slip), and nobody had a stock suspension, so I figured that we'd have a problem-free run with a few challenges for entertainment. Dave (from Ontario) and John had never been there, and Mark had only driven to Hut Lake, not Upper Hut.
Doug and I met at an A&W for breakfast, then zipped over to my place of work for the 09:00h meet. Introductions were made, trucks were checked out, and we eventually rolled out of the parking lot in the warm morning sun. Gabor rode with me, Karl rode with Chad, and Judit rode with Doug. Karl had informed me that Gabor did not speak English, so I had organized our communications so each of our three guests had a VHF radio. This allowed them to converse in Hungarian, while the trucks kept in contact via CB.
The plan was to make a bee-line to Squamish, where we'd make a pit-stop for those who needed gas and food. Doug and I were planning on splitting a Subway sub, and we spent a few minutes looking around for a Subway restaurant before Trish told us that Squamish didn't have one. Doh! We picked up half-subs from the Chevron Town Pantry instead, paying only twice as much. We all met up at the side of the highway, and took a group pic once Chad and Karl caught up (Chad was ordering a sandwich at Tim Horton's).
We finally arrived at the trailhead, where we aired down (I went down to my usual 10 psi for rocks). I explained to Karl what we were doing and why we were doing it, which he translated for Gabor. Those of us with automatic deflators stood around and gabbed while we waited for the rest to manually air down. Once everyone was done, we were off. We drove slowly along the access road as there was an open house of some sort at the first lake, and we didn't want to dust out (or run over) the pedestrians who were walking along the road. One young boy did a "Look, Daddy!!" when he saw us approaching; I waved at him and put a big grin on his face. Possibly a future Toyota 4x4 owner? We eventually arrived at the turn-off to Hut Lake, and Gabor, who was probably getting used to the easy logging road, exclaimed "Oh!" when he saw the trail and realized we'd be driving up it.
I shifted the truck into 4-low and started up the trail, the truck getting tossed side to side as we bumped over the rocks. As we approached the first split, John called on the CB, saying he had just noticed that his VHF antenna was missing. He did a quick search, but didn't locate it. Doug loaned him his spare antenna, and we carried on. The trail smoothened out somewhat after the initial uneven section, then resumed it's roughness again just before the first obstacle.
Actually, it would have been more of an obstacle if the evil rock-stackers hadn't filled it in with rocks of all sizes. I started unstacking the rocks, and after a while was joined by Mark, who probably realized that we weren't moving until I was done, as I was the lead vehicle. :) Chad commented, "I think Greg's a bit miffed about the condition of this trail!" I explained the reason for unstacking the rocks to our guests, which was translated for Gabor. I guess everyone understood the seriousness of "paving" one of the few remaining semi-difficult trails in our area, because by the time we reached the trench, practically everyone was helping to unstack, including our guests. Please, please, if you have to stack rocks, either remove them when you are done, or use your winch, or turn around and find a trail more suited to your vehicle or driving ability. There are plenty of easy to moderate trails in our area; don't ruin the difficult ones for those of us who enjoy them. If you come across this trail vandalism, please do your part and unstack. I think we spent about two hours in total unstacking all of the main obstacles.
Anyways, everyone made it over the first obstacle with no problem whatsoever. Chad scoffed at some of the Toyotas, as he heard the tell-tale "Chshhh" of their ARB air lockers disengaging after the climb. :) A couple of dirt-bikers came up behind us; we told them to go on ahead as we knew we'd be a lot slower than they would, but they elected to turn around instead. The remainder of the trail was fairly uneventful up to Hut Lake, aside from the odd bit of undercarriage banging from the vertically-challenged.
We arived at Hut Lake around noon, and parked our trucks on the large rocks there. A couple of hikers were sunbathing at the edge of the lake and looked a bit worried when we first arrived, but once they realized that we were the quiet, family-oriented four-wheeler types and not the stereo-blasting, beer-drinking yahoo types, they went back to sunbathing. After lunch, everyone gathered at the "big rock" by the lake, the next obstacle. It consisted of a steep, exposed rock face, and unless your line was pretty good, you would be off-camber. There used to be a tree at the start of the rock to the left, along with a lot of undergrowth, but some loser cut the tree down either because his/her vehicle wasn't capable of scaling the rock, or because his/her driving lacked basic skill, and he/she was too lazy to drive back around to the exit. When the tree was there, you had to be over to the right side of the rock a certain distance to avoid hitting the tree; this made it a lot more fun. Now there's a muddy bypass for the lesser vehicles and drivers; I told everyone to pretend the tree was still there, and we stood along the bypass to force all of the trucks to go over the rock. :)
Everyone who tried it made it over the rock. I just drove straight over it, making it look easy. Doug did the same, using his Marlin. John took a couple of attempts; his facial expression was priceless as he was ascending the face with a front tire in the air. Kari had no problems. Dave in his stock-height truck made it up with a fair bit of scraping on his front ARB bumper. Gabor, who as it turns out loves Jeeps, swapped seats with Karl and happily climbed into Chad's Jeep. Chad stated that there was no way he'd make it up the rock due to Jeep's bright idea of putting the spring shackles in the front, but after a bit of encouragement he tried it and didn't even come close to scraping them. Mark wimped out, but I think he would have made it with no problems (I did it with open diffs two years ago). Nothing that seat time and peer pressure can't solve!
On to the second part of the trail, which was quite a bit more overgrown than the first section, due in part to it being less travelled because it's more difficult. Karl, who was now riding with me, confided that he'd rather be in an enclosed vehicle because he was getting beaten up by all the branches in the open Jeep. I told him that it was a good thing he swapped seats then, because it just got worse! Karl got a good chuckle out of that as he thought about Gabor getting his shins whacked.
The next obstacle was a V that you had to straddle; it was almost totally filled in with rocks by the trail vandals. Again, we unstacked what had not been unstacked before. Nobody had any problems here, although the trucks equipped (saddled?) with the stiff Skyjacker springs got a tire in the air.
Note: The previous portion of this trip report was written within a week of the trip; now it's October 31/00 and I've finally allocated some time to finish writing it. Let's see how much I can remember! :)
We wound our way up the trail, squeaking by the stump at the sharp left-hand turn. We were approaching the most difficult section of the trip, and I was wondering what the condition of the trail would be like. I stopped at the entrance to the trench, a steep climb up a V-shaped step, and hopped out to survey the terrain. The rock-stackers had been hard at work destroying the trail here as well, so we spent several minutes removing all of their paving stones to restore the trail to its former glory. Mark elected to park the Pathfinder here, rather than risk expensive body damage on an unfamiliar trail.
I climbed up the V-step without too much trouble; dual ARB's really make things look easy! I didn't bother to stop, and continued on to the trench exit, the final and toughest obstacle of the trail. It's basically a steep rock climb along a fin, with a deep drop on the left side and a dirt embankment on the right, and you have to make a turn to the left in the middle of it. If you were too far to the left, you'd slip off the fin and smash the left side of your truck in. Too far to the right, and you'll run your fender into the embankment. There's usually a bit of water dribbling over the rocks to make things interesting. I scaled this obstacle with my usual finesse (hah) and managed to get the right front tire in the air as the left tires climbed the fin. The last picture is blurry because Doug was trying to not get run over as he paused momentarily in my path to snap the photo. :)
Doug was next; his dual ARB's and Marlin Crawler made short work of the trench, and he too got a tire in the air on the way out. Kari followed; he got hung up in the exact same spot has he did the last time we came up here, and not even his new tires could "claw" him out of his predicament. I took a look under his truck; he was resting his right-side rocker panel on a rock, which had taken some of his blue paint for a souvenir. An analysis of his approach determined that he was turning too far to the left as he climbed the step; he needed to stick closer to the right side to avoid getting his transfer-case cross-member snagged by one particular rock. Like last time, we High-Lifted his rear bumper up and pushed him off of it, allowing him to crest the ledge. Like the rest of us, he got a tire in the air while exiting the trench.
Dave was next; his near-stock height X-cab was doing fine until he got a bit too close to the right side of the step. He wasn't able to make it over the ledge, and had to back up; unfortunately he got too close to a root and wrinkled his right rear quarter-panel. At one point he had both front tires off the ground, and was rocking back and forth on his xfer-case cross-member. After some valiant attempts, he elected to call for the cable, and Chad winched him up the ledge from behind, via a snatch block and an obliging tree. I think his difficulties stemmed from a clearance issue; he managed to impress all of us when he climbed the fin with almost no effort, left front tire way up in the air of course.
Chad had no trouble at the trench entrance, but the exit was another story! He made several attempts, but just didn't get the right line. Sometimes, wheelbase makes all the difference. Some creative spotting got him a bit further up the fin, then he suddenly found his seatbelt choking off the air supply to his neck (don't ask!). He matted the accellerator in a moment of panic-stricken confusion, launching his Jeep up the fin as the rest of us scrambled out of his path. WHAM!! He came to a sudden stop as the right front corner of his factory bumper nailed the embankment. Well, I guess that's one way to scale the fin... After verifying that he was alright, we inspected the bumper... a nice bend in that corner, but no other damage. It was definitely a hall of fame moment, and I think Gabor was speechless!
Finally it was John's turn; he had no trouble at the trench entrance either, but he had trouble finding a good line at the exit. We then gave him some very specific spotting instructions, and he eventually made it up. The rest of the trail was easy, just overgrown, and we wound our way up to Upper Hut Lake where we relaxed at the shore and chatted about trucks and trails. Some of us sat down on some logs that extended out into the water, and had a bite to eat in the cool breeze coming off the lake.
The trip back down was fun as usual; John carefully inched his way down into the trench, as Trish looked out her window with a "Why am I doing this?" look on her face. Lurch, brake, lurch, brake. :) Spotting from Glen allowed him to make it down unscathed. John caught up to Dave, who was blocking the far end of the trench. It turned out that Dave had blown his right front brake line, and had a bit of an adventure coming down the fin. :) Guess what? IFS Toys have the same brake-line fittings as solid-axle Toys, so I dug out my spare set of brake hoses and Dave swapped his split hose out (after fighting with some rust... Ontario truck, ya know).
As I decended into the trench, Jason yelled "Stop!" to me. I hit the brakes, as the truck rocked back and forth. "What?" I asked. "Photo op!" was the reply! LOL I could hear Jason saying "Check this out!" to somebody behind the truck. Doug's over-exposed photos (new camera, playing with the settings) basically show what was going on; my front axle was twisted up and I had a rear tire in the air, all while pointed down into the steep drop into the trench. Once they had finished playing around, I "gently" eased the truck down the grade, with a loud *CLANK* as I momentarily rested the nose of the truck on the ground. Didn't seem that steep on the way up...
We headed back to town, stopping at the Brackendale Chevron for air, and the Squamish Taco Bell for dinner. Dave said that this was one of the toughest trails he had ever been on. John said he had a great time. Karl said we were crazy. Gabor was ecstatic that he was able to experience 4-wheeling in a Jeep, his dream vehicle (well there's just no accounting for taste, is there? ha-ha). Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and Karl is already talking about "next time". :)
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