Perspiration ridge

Quick trip out to 'Perspiration ridge' today.  Located about 17km down the buckhorn road just south of PG.  Turn off to Fancis lk.  Aired down to 10 psi and disconnected sway bars at Fancis, tho we could have aired down as soon as we hit the gravel road on the buckhorn, lots of pot holes.

Looked like Chris, Bill and I were in for a rainy day.  Wasn't long before we were making our way up the rocky trail.  Very rocky terrain! As we had neared the peak of our trip we had word, i assume on the CB, that we would be joined by Ben and Ray.  I forgot to put my antenna back in after cleaning out the jeep earlier in the week.

We continued up a little more then began our way down to Frost Lake, lots of steep rutty trail and some trees that had fallen down that we could squeeze under, i was a little worried for my soft top under some of the sharp branches coming off of them.

We had a good BS session then carried on.  Along the way there were signs for ATV/Snowmobile club trails that i had been on once in the past.  It was a fun road, lots of little puddles and water flowing down the road as if it were a stream.

 We had to stop for one downed tree across the road, chainsaw made quick work of it, then took the less traveled path out of there where the pine trees branches were tight around us.  We stopped at a dump site with a few trashed old vehicles and lots of old tin cans.  Then before we knew it we were back on the buckhorn at buckhorn lake.  We stopped and chatted some more...

We hit the road and headed back towards the highway.  We stopped at a school and aired back up and reconnected sway bars.  Was a good trip, more exploring to do out that way for another day.

Google map link: MAP
We went in at A, B is Frost Lake, we came out at C.

Bill was kind enough to share this youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=etvG_gBGPeg

Quesnel Canyon Crawl

Found a forum belonging to a local 4x4 club, the North Caribou Offroad Adventure Society (NCOAS).  Within the forum i met a member who offered to meet me Saturday morning 8am at a gas station heading south to show me to the Quesnel canyon.  Sure enough Chris was there and we turned on the cb's and hit the highway towards Quesnel.  My jeep was fairly slow on the highway as i have a vibration due to my front driveshaft issue.  I plan to remedy this next week!  We took a quick shortcut shortly before Quesnel over to the Barkerville highway and headed towards our turnoff (17km outside of Quesnel).  We pulled over at the entrance to Quesnel Canyon East Forest Service Road to air down our tires and disconnect our sway bars.  I ran at 15psi as i wasn't sure how far down to go and started to see the tire bulge a little there.  Next time i air down i'll try 10psi or so as i could feel the rocks more than i thought i needed to.  Then we started down the gravel road down down down into the canyon.

We finally got down to the river and the road turned to trail and we continued eastwards towards the first camp area.  We stopped and chatted for a while, met a few people, then continued on towards the second camp area, but not without a few scenic stops along the way.  Chris was an excellent tour guide.  Over the cb he told me alternate routes around and we made side trips to places like these:

This device, called a trommel, was used to find gold once upon a time.  I imagine a loader would be used to dump buckets of dirt, gravel, sludge, sediment, and it is mixed with lots of water and the long barrel would spin separating big rocks and piling them while the smaller stuff would drop thru the screens at the end, being cleaned up in the process then would go down a sluice where it would separate the gold.  The sluice part seems to be missing i think.  This thing is pretty large, looking them up online i see more of a portable style that maybe one or two people could lift.  This one also portable as long as you had enough water to float it, tho it seemed to be anchored there.  The wooden deck was rotting away.  (On this map it is located at way point B, the first camp is at C - MAP)
Here is a pic looking back towards the first camp area:

Continuing on there was mining equipment in the bushes every now and then.  Eventually we came to a cabin.  Apparently the cabin was in better shape last year.  

Its hard to capture in the pictures but there were lots of steep hills and narrow roads that were straight up on one side and straight down on the other, usually down towards the rushing river.  Most of the road was well traveled but some of the side trails were not

There were a few rocky water crossings along the way.  You can see me clearly paying attention to the road ahead of me in this one too:

Eventually we came up to the second camp area.  There were a few people at the first camp ground who would not venture further in, in their current vehicles.  Many twists and turns and hills.  Was a fun drive so far, but it gets even better later.  Here is the second camp area, way point E on the map.  For some reason google maps has the road ending at point D, but as you can see it carries on for quite a ways.

We stopped and chatted for a while here, met more good people.  There was also another group staying further to the left of us.  There was talk of a poker run(this might have been at the first camp) but all the 'run' was to be further down the trail from this point.  The poker run is an event in which everyone who wants to take part has to buy in, $5 in our case, and you have to go find the 7 different locations which have a bunch of envelopes that have a card inside.  You may only take one envelope from each location. You are not supposed to open your envelope and bring them all back and make your best poker hand with your cards.
Chris offered to show me more of the trail and on wards we went.  It got a little muddy fairly quickly:

Over the CB came the words 'theres a nice spot to take pictures of your rig all flexed out,'  or something to that effect, so i took advantage.  I believe the first pic is Chris stopped in the spot himself.  I hope its normal for my spring to come off the top mount like it did.  It let me know it was back in place as i drove off in the form of a big clang.  All was good.

We came across a few fallen trees and Chris was well prepared with a small chainsaw, which i see myself acquiring in the future to replace the swede saw i carry.  A few small issues with the saw and some manual labor and trail was cleared and we were ready to carry on.

Was warned about the bottomless puddle here, know as 'the polish.'  Apparently its put a few vehicles out of commission.  The guy setting up the poker run passed us here, and luckily he did as he got stuck right infront of us, twice in the same spot.  Nothing Chris's jeep couldn't solve...twice.

Stuck video
Unstuck video

Not knowing the capabilities of my new jeep, I put it in 4 low and locked the rear end and crawled through where he got stuck.  No problems.  This area claimed many victims later as you'll see.

It started to rain on us, not too bad for the most part but when your inside it never seems too bad.  It rained off and on for a while.  I came around the corner to see Chris in a nice parking spot near another cabin.  The cabin used to have an underground tunnel in it, which has long since collapsed:

More water crossings and some nice views:

We came to a dried up creek bed and apparently the road doesn't go much further so it was our turn around point, but not after driving up the creek for a while.  Was good and bumpy.

Heres a quick video of this section after we had turned around, I know my keys are loud, i think i need to slim down my key chain a bit! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjq3jszCE5s

We took another path back that went away from the water.  As i said earlier its hard to capture with the camera how steep some of this stuff is.  We came to another place where there was a good photo opportunity  I should have pulled up a little bit more but its still not bad.

Just around the corner from here you come up to a cabin, where we began to see poker run cards.  We got out and had a walk around looking at the various pieces of equipment around and grabbing an envelope.  Once upon a time there must have been a nice creek running through the area for mining.

Hitting the road again, more of the same, steep hills, water crossings and poker run cards:

Couple more vid's coming back through some of the mud: Video1 Video 2

We had arrived back at camp 2 and collected all but 2 of the poker run cards, numbers 1 and 2, which we would later go back out for.

 Ray's toyota and Trevor's Suzuki

 Sorry man, i think your name was Ben?  His toyota broke a rear axle sometime over the weekend but was still capable of running the trails out here.  Of course once he found the broken axle he parked it and his next drive would be the trail out.

  I headed out on the trail to find the last two poker cards, the first one was pretty close to camp then i ran into the other group of people out there, mostly in stock vehicles

Was the owner of this jeep also Ben?  Sorry if i get any names wrong, met a bunch of people and had many drinks the evening i camped out ;)  Loved this jeep, full size axles, this thing was a beast.

The other group kept getting stuck in all the holes maybe 5-10 minutes out of camp...I think i spent about 3 hours there watching them all get stuck, pulling each other out and falling a tree so that some can get out without going back thru one of the holes.  The blue chev was doing a lot of the rescue duty.   It was amusing but i wanted that last envelope!  A few beers came into play and i knew i was going to spend the night camping.

This guy in the red ford was stuck in these holes for a bit, then on his way out sideswiped a tree, and instead of stopping he thought getting on the throttle was the best way off of it, his mirror folded in and broke his passenger window and dented his door and rear quarter panel pretty good.  Chris pulled him out of his predicament only for him to slide into another mud rut seconds later...

 Got a decent pic of Joel's FJ cruiser coming up to the traffic jam through some of the mud, seems like a pretty capable rig:

I parked and walked up ahead of where everyone was stuck to get my last card baring envelope and headed back to camp for drinks and hotdogs.  Chris did all the poker run work and someone from the other camp won, a girl named Hope with I think a full house aces over ?.  I believe Trevor came in second with his full house kings over queens. A hat and shirt were given to 3rd and 4th, but i missed it, i think Rosie took one of the prizes.  Much like poker when i actually play, i came in near last place with a pair of 6's.  It was fun to play tho!  We stayed up till the early hours of Sunday having drinks around the fire and listening to good and funny tunes from Trevors suzuki.

In the morning we were treated to watching a young moose swimming across the river, once it realized we were there, it decided that it needed to go back to the far side of the river.  There were three islands in front of us and it would walk up the middle one and jump in, out of our site, and try to hit a spot before the cut bank, it missed, then would walk and fight his way up river then he'd float back down passed and swim over to the far island, run up it, swim to the middle island and repeat this process 10 or more times.  Poor thing must have been absolutely exhausted.  Eventually it crossed over to our side of the river up away from us and was never seen again, probably having a good snooze after all that work.

Ray's custom box.

Sunday was beautiful and i had some sunburn by the end of it.  We headed out in the afternoon sometime, making a few of scenic stops along the way.  Chris had only planned on a day trip and went home the previous day, I was following Ray and Trevor out of here.  We made a few familiar stops along the way:

Trevor Ben and Isaiah (possibly spelled wrong) climbed onto the trommel and climbed through the tube and up onto the gravel intake part.

We then rolled into the first camp for a visit, and were invited to try some home made apple cinnamon moonshine cooked up by chef Rod, or Ron?  I had one cup as i was told i had to try it and it was delicious!  Not all of us had it go down so smoothly. "Wrong tube, wrong tube"

We made one last stop before i headed out.  It was a pretty crazy looking path down by the water that we decided not to cross this outing, perhaps later this year.  There was a pretty crazy dip we had to cross along the way.  I believe on my way out i hit my hidden hitch in the dirt.

Got some pics of Trevor crossing the dip

I said my goodbyes and hit the road out of there, a big uphill climb on the gravel road.  Everyone else was spending another night and I had only planned for one night.  I had a great time seeing what the new jeep could do, met new people, and enjoyed the scenery and the tour.

Once i got to the top of the road i reconnected the sway bar and hit the road.  Shortly after being on the highway i pulled over at hush lake and disconnected my front driveshaft and tied it up to the frame as the ride was a little too shaky. It cleaned up the ride quite a bit.  I got home around 730pm.