Well, we decided to go to Forbidden Mountain instead. Here is our write up:
FORBIDDEN MOUNTAIN NOTSTALGIA RUN – September 18, 2005
Members participating: Steve Tetu, Rob Millson, Marcin Cichy, Craig Elliott, Garry Broeckling, Gary Telford, Bill Wilkinson.
Guests: Harley, Dan, and Gary Telford’s nephew Geordie.
Full moon Sunday woke up sunny and promised to be a good wheel’n day. We assembled at Steve’s and De Dutch Pannakoek House for a decent breakfast with cute servers. From the window at De Dutch we eagerly viewed the Mystery Ridge cut and summit. We could hardly wait to get moving past all the traffic and congestion.
We headed up the hill past the monster houses and golf courses in Mystery Plateau. The bypass was not exceptionally muddy at the beginning so we all made it in ok through the roots, rocks and holes, although where were tight spots between the trees.
We took an old overgrown dead end logging road east down the hill and over decaying cord roads, skid trails, and massive stumps of the old growth. There is no doubt what first attracted the attention of the outside world to what would become this municipality. The trees. Centuries old, they towered hundreds of feet into the air, straight and knot free, the kind of raw timber that was used to build the prairie homes and even the ceilings of the Imperial Palace in Beijing, China. One was recorded by surveyors in 1886 as to be sixty-four feet in circumference, four feet from the ground. This tree would be more than 20 feet in diameter. There are still old artifacts to be found here: old buckets, sawmill junk, remnants of logging camps, derelict log bridges, Chinese porcelain soup spoons, and sawyer’s notches up the huge old stumps.
Back to the gate area and on up the main road toward Mystery Ridge. Several areas are shewn with boulders and probably too rough for low rider stock Cruisers. Rob tore a piece of chrome moulding off his rocker. At one point, Dan’s rad overheated and he ran quite a few trips with a bottle to a creek. Later Dan wrecked his steering stabilizer on a boulder. Garry B drove his stock BJ42 pretty aggressively but his running boards and front shackles took a beating, and who knows what else? Hope he make it back ok to Squamish later! Near the east lookout Steve tried going up a nasty rock face and broke a Birfield. Gary Telford snagged a log into his passenger door seam, bent his rear bumper way way up, and bashed his right rear quarter panel. The view from the microwave tower bases was fantastic, we could see all the way to New Westminster, the Port Mann bridge, the Pattullo Bridge, and the Alex Fraser bridge all the way to Boundary Bay, Tsawassen, and Vancouver Island.
Later we went back up the main trail to the west lookout where we met a couple in a sprung-over Four Runner. The view from the west lookout was equally stunning showing North Shore forests, Stanley Park, Georgia Strait and beyond. We made it back down the mountain in time for supper. It was sure nice to wheel so close to home for a change. Gary Telford aired up at a gas station near The Center and one of his rear brakes was smelling hot. By the time he made it home, it was smoking and pretty close to locking up and almost burning. So instead of relaxing on the couch, he spent the rest of the evening in the driveway messing with his brakes. They are OK now.
It was a great day. Everyone enjoyed it and thought it was a blast. For the early wheelers who used to do Forbidden Ridge so many years ago, it was like coming home.
~Bill
