Four Days stuck in 1st and 2nd gear low Range (2 Viewers)

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.

Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Threads
79
Messages
4,002
Location
Fort St John, BC
Gather round kiddies for a story. Check that no time for stories, but will throw together some pics and comments of our recent trip to Tumbler Ridge to a trail that hadn't seen trucks in like 20 or 30 year based on some of the trees growing on the road, and only quad use, but looks like they hadn't gone past the river crossing past the falls in like 2 or 3 years cause there was grass growing in a lot of their tracks. Man we did a lot of bush wacking, road building, and we definately stepped it up even past the next level. Enough nail biting narrow erroded off camber (tight enough for a quad) with a big revene to tumble into to last me a wheeling season. But hey we will probably go back August long, cause that area is so awsome, words can not describe, and that trail has every thing from rock crawling, bush wacking, river crossing, mud bogging, to severe bush wacking. And the entire way is surrounded by wicked mountain views, while all the time being pretty creepy as it is through a huge valley that was burned a long time ago. Anyway here a few pics from the start.
P7010396.jpg
P7010397.jpg
P7010400.jpg
 
This is still of the area regularly used by quaders and was still fairly open, but there were a few spots that were real tight already, but we quickly bashed through as it was getting late on Thursday and we wanted to go a far as we could get cause we knew we had a long way to go (probably around 20- 30km all in 1st or 2nd low range) and a lot of road building to do.
P7010403.jpg
P7010406.jpg
P7010407.jpg
 
Still in the open, the last of these is friday morning when we had to wake up to a little rain and the "big road build". Took us half a day (adam has better pictures of the actual building), and a lot of grunt work, but let us go where we were going.
P7010413.jpg
P7010419.jpg
P7020423.jpg
 
For the road build we went up on the hill and cut one tree into two pieces, figured it was good and hauled them down but they were too short, so up the slope again and found a longer one and hauled it down. Still not as long as we wanted, but figured it was good. Dug it in and put the next two up against the long one to fill in the hole. Adam drove up to it, but the road and the logs started to sluff away, so he backed up but now we were commited cause there was no way he could back up over the narrow quad track he just went accross (we already had to jack his truck up and push the back end over, where he ended up taking a high lift to the forehead and split his eyebrow open...)

Any way so we hiked up the mountain again to the patch of big dead trees and took one that was already lying down and chopped it to the length we needed, then pushed it down the steep hill to the trail. This time we couldn't really manhandle it cause it was too big, yet it was still 20m down the trail where our straps and adams winch could reach, so on went the sling and all three off us huffed it to the winch, then winched into place and done.

Redo of the trip over it and it didn't even budge, but next time we go we will hammer a couple stakes into it to hold it into place better, probably tie the logs together too.
P7020424.jpg
P7020425.jpg
P7020432.jpg
 
After the mud bog, which we all did OK, except Amandas little bronco 2 had to get a tug through and got carpets coated in skeg mud we did the long river crossing that is keeping the quaders out (assuming they can make it once the river drops) for now. then on through the old dead forest and into the never ending bush wacking.
P7020435.jpg
P7020439.jpg
P7020444.jpg
 
More Bush wacking, then end of the road so we camped and decided to head up river to see the falls in the morning then turn back to do some trail clearing and possibly find the other old road intersection we musta missed on the way in because of the thick brush. Last photo adam by the upper falls in the morning
P7020451.jpg
P7030454.jpg
P7030457.jpg
 
Driving down the river back from the falls (I had water over the hood due to a couple stupid errors in judgement and some water to wet my carpets, but my feet still stayed dry), then we crossed over to where the road had eroded (where we camped) to see how much work it would take to build road when we come back. Seen it wouldn't be hard, but might have to cut a few dead trees to make it around where the road had been eroded away by the creek.
P7030459.jpg
P7030461.jpg
P7030462.jpg
 
Then we found the other trail and drove up it for a ways, this was way more cleared, but climbed high into the hills (had to leave the stock bronco 2 behind cause of one knarly steep loose rock hill climb and then we ran into a place of some brush clearing so we turned around to go back to clean the main trail and leave this for another day. first pic of the decent off the mountain, then back to bush wacking cause it was getting late clearing the trail, so we had to make it close to the end of the trail so we could get out and home on the last day. Last pic of camp on last day, again got rain in the morning (nice to sleep inside the truck and away from rain, but I did have to tarp the inside of my bed, cause I flooded the back carpet with skeg water trying to make it up the ledge)
P7030463.jpg
P7030464.jpg


P7040465.jpg
 
Final few picks I had. Hopefully Adam got a bunch of good pics, cause I seem to have a lot of his truck. Will post them up if he gets them to me.
Cheers,
Deny
P7020428.jpg
P7040466.jpg
P7040467.jpg
 
Last edited:
:cool: Sounds like a fun trip. Looks like a nice area from the pics.

My weekend trip (kootenays) I didn't even get to lock the hubs.
 
It was, and the area is nice. The only thing that sucks is the tight trail, as I ripped the G off the side of my truck, ripped the passanger chrome gutter off, plus the bottom window chrome, which I was able to slap back on, cracked the front marker light even more than it was, and permenantly scuffed up my paint job (haven't tried scrubing with a brush, but pressure washer didn't take it off).

If your game August long, we plan on going in again, but plan on atleast 4 days on the trail, otherwise it is not worth it, cause it is a long trail which takes time.
 
Thanks for the offer. 4 days on trail plus 2 days for the drive there/back just isn't possible for me in Aug. No extended weekends during Aug/Sept instream works window is company policy :mad:.
 
The paint held up pretty good, I think only a few places around the wheel wells were down to the blue, but most likely had to do with rock chips, but the tree marks were just buffing down into the thick tremclad roller job. They did leave perminent marks, but I am sure if I just give it a good wash, and roller over top, it will be as good as new (won't get around for a while though).

Adam just dropped off his pictures at my work, and he got quite a few cool pictures, will post them up either after work or tommorow.

Oh and John, looks like this trail is the 4x4 Mecca (not quite cause there arn't a lot of trails, just one (splits into two) long one), has everything you would ever encounter wheeling (obsticals), is completely isolated of any activity (except a little quading) and is almost 20km from the start, to where we ended, which is only really half way to the end of both the trails that are located in that valley.
 
Oh and John, looks like this trail is the 4x4 Mecca (not quite cause there arn't a lot of trails, just one (splits into two) long one), has everything you would ever encounter wheeling (obsticals), is completely isolated of any activity (except a little quading) and is almost 20km from the start, to where we ended, which is only really half way to the end of both the trails that are located in that valley.

Sounds like a great place to go for a short trip next summer. I especially like the idea of not encountering vehicle after vehicle. Not so sure about filling up with skeg water and muck. Might have to pull out the carpets pre-trip. How deep of a hole did you find driving down river?
 
Sounds like a great place to go for a short trip next summer. I especially like the idea of not encountering vehicle after vehicle. Not so sure about filling up with skeg water and muck. Might have to pull out the carpets pre-trip. How deep of a hole did you find driving down river?

Great place for a short trip if you don't mind lots of pinstripping. We are going back in for this August long to do some more trail cleaning, but we will just be getting the dead trees that scrap and smash something fierce. The constant willow regrowth we will have to get next year if we can rent some sort of brush cutter, cause it is way too long of a trail to clean all of it by hand. We didn't see anyone the whole trip in, not even quaders ventured past the long river crossing, but we did see their tracks heading to the falls big falls some time that weekend.

The skeg water can be avoided now that we know the long way around the hole is the shallowest:doh:

Driving the river was mostly just to the bottom of the doors, but the big hole I found was over my hood and up to the middle drivers side window, and it was fairly steep offcamber as I was trying to head out of the creek. It was all my stupidity though as Adam was ahead and stopped, starting to look for a way onto the shore, when I just said screw it and went for it, not even really thinking that it was deep, but the channel was pretty narrow there and I was lucky I didn't flop into the river. The other hole was just coming back through a little higher up the river, went a little to the left where we were going before and just found a deeper section of the main channell and my entire hood dropped under water for a few seconds.
 
You need a snorkle. You're one of the few that seems to find ways of putting winch and snorkle to use on a regular basis :clap:.
More pics?
 
You need a snorkle. You're one of the few that seems to find ways of putting winch and snorkle to use on a regular basis :clap:.
More pics?

A snorkle is another thing on my to-do-list, if I can only find the parts for my mig gun. Guess I need to really clean the garage one of these days or go and order new ones again from KMS. I agree with Martin, we need more pics!
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom