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

[Deny]

Thanks for the offer George, if I remember, I will send you a PM when I am heading through. Last trip was way too hectic and on a short time line to stop, but generally I head out in the evening on a Thursday or Friday, then stop in to spend the night at friends in PG, so I am usually in Quesnel in the Morning on Friday or Saturday depending on how many beer I drank the night before and if my buddy Kim needs to be at work that day Head back and usually spend the night again in PG, so around 4-6pm in Quesnel on my way up.

Anyway next trip south is planned around Christmas time.
Cheers,
Deny

 

[Deny]

Because the Sand Dweller challenged us to hit the trail in the winter, here it is. Not really winter, just late fall, but the snow was on the ground a little early this year.

The wagon already had a tear of joy in its eye as we were airing down at the begining of Gravel. Adam was hesitent about going because he was a litte worried about the snowy highways, but the swampers seemed to do OK on them, even with the trailer. Pic 2 - big bear tracks on the road in. Pic 3 - trail head.

 

[Deny]

Sorry for the blurryness on some of the photos, as 1, it was cold, and 2 we were running out of light, so I was rushing most of them. Trucks were making quick work of the trail, snow didn't really hinder us. The low cloud cover made some of the mountains look endless and seemed like the snowy avalance shoots were fangs from the sky.

 

[Deny]

More snowy mountains. More to come later, busy catching up at work from taking two days off.

 

[bigneily]

Excellent job bud, Any hunting to be done? What were you guys crashing in ? hopefully a wall tent with a cozy stove. Looks very fresh to be tenting it or in the back of the cruiser. Neil

 

[Deny]

Yeah Neil, we were hoping to do a bit of hunting while out there (and we did look around with our guns ready) as we always see moose tracks and droppings, however we didn't see one sign of any big game the whole weekend, kinda dissapointing actually. Just bear, wolf, and some kind of small fur bearing animals.

Had the tarp shelter out there where we walled in the one windy side and just kept the flames high to keep us warm, then slept in our trucks. first night was cold, but second and third night I had a generator running a small heater inside for a few hours until the generator ran out of gas which kept me real warm, Adam stayed warm with an extra blanket and his dog huddling next to him Had a cheap sleeping bag though and all bundled up with clothes next time will have to get one of those military style sleeping bags.

 

[Deny]

Tight track next to the ravine was a little sketch with the snow, especially with the slight off camber having gravity trying to push you over the edge on the slick track.

 

[boozewz]

Thanks for sharing Deny, looks like great fun wheeling in the snow!

It seems the swampers is the tire of choice here. Has anyone else run a different tire up there? How did they cope?

Also, do you ever have trouble trying to fire up the diesel motor after a cooold night parked up on the trail?

Cheers

 

[Deny]

No Problem Boozewz,

We have only had one other truck on the trail without swampers and they ran the old BFG mud terrains. Truck made it OK, just needed a few tugs here and there, but then again he wasn't locked at all, where as we are locked front and rear. The swampers are just really good at crawling the mud holes, we don't have to spin barely at all, so we leave a smaller foot print, but any tire would be ok, especially when this trail is dry. if more frozen, the swamper would probably do worse, as I might not have slipped off the icy trail on the way back if I had other tires better on ice or packed snow, but we generally run chains anyway in the deeper snow or if more of the trail would be icy.

No I didn't have problems starting, the truck didn't like it, but it did OK, but wasn't that cold, was only -10 to -15 at night and warmed up to -2 or -5 in the day. winters up here can get to -30 or worse! Another reason I brought the generator, cause if I couldn't start, could always run the block heater for an hour or two in the morning to get it going.

Cheers,

 

[Deny]

A few more for the weekend while I stopped in at the office to pick up a few things for work tommorow.

Had a bunch of trees down, must have had some wet snow earlier that melted, but was heavy enough to take down a bunch of the dead standing trees. Some of the rocks had the snow dusting defining the rock and making look like the mountains were flexing their muscles.

Off to clear some snow in my back alley, way more snow in Fort St. John than even the mountains!

 

[BC40]

and then what happened?.....
Nice pics as always, too bad about no moose in the area.

 

[Deny]

Lots happend, hold your horses, I'll get to it eventually

It really doesn't help my stupid new camera only lets me load one picture at a time on mud, no clue what is going on, but makes it a little tedious to post up a bunch at a time, usually get a post or two in and get angry at the stupid computer.

 

[Deny]

Cause Martin asked, here is another one, only one though, since it takes forever to post at home and I have s*** to do

Then going through the skeg hole I blew my drivers miror off, then climbing out of the river I was doing stupid things by trying to follow the quad track and ended up blowing out my air valve then blowing my tire off the rim which held us back about 20 min to change to my skinny spare.

Then chainsawing into the night as we pushed on through all the dead fall to get to the second river crossing and our campsite for a few days.

 

[Deny]

After setting up in the dark and a warm fire, had a cold night in the cruiser, so decided I would run the generator and under dash plug in heater the next night. Also because I had some troubles with my skinny tire over a few obsticles on the way in, decided to just jump in with Adam for the hunting we were going to do for the next two days.

Looks like Adam took a bit of tree damage on the way in at night. We decided to head up to the saddle trail as we could get some good views of the valley and there was a wet area we wanted to check out for tracks. we soon found a lot more snow going up and soon were sliding off the steep trail and were winching.

 

[Deny]

continued winching up the slope fighting for traction as the dog patiently waits. Then started getting into too much snow so we decided to leave the truck and do a little hiking.

These are some of my favorite pictures up here, the day was just briliantly bright, and the views were breathtaking.

 

[AJAEbj42]

Probably so still you could hear the air (as my 8 year-old daughter told me a few years back when we were hiking in the snow up at Manning). Well, for us city-folk it's that ringing in our ears when we finally get to a place that's absolutely quiet.

That's just awesome.

 

[kim]

"Hear the air".

That is a great way to put it.

Awesome indeed!

 

[Deny]

definitely didn't hear any big animals, and was one of those days that even though it was below zero, when the sun was out, felt like +20.

 

[Deny]

As we were hiking I was just snapping a few photos, taking in the surroundings and just how cool it is to be where we were, with not a soul in sight, and probably not closer than the nearest oil and gas work camp probably over 100km away (probably same as the nearest moose ) Couldn't find any tracks in the fresh snow.

 

[Deny]

Thought we saw some animals up in the slope, but zooming in the photo, was just a weird rock shadow and snowless slope under the rock. Then three eagles circling above us (although you can't see them in the pic). Then we started hiking back down and decided to stop to clear a bit of trail that we smashed through cause we didn't want to stop on the steep snowy slope.