A mighty fine group of people came together on Saturday. We had some of the coolest people and vehicles! I knew a couple of the people on this trip, but not everyone. We had two people who just made a day or half-day of it, while the rest spent Saturday night in the canyon. At least one rig camped on Friday night as well.
Saturday went as expected. Everyone got to know each other. We did the grand tour of Douglas County, taking in such breathtaking places as Douglas and Alston (or Alls Town). Then we entered Slack Canyon, following Douglas Creek up. Must have had superb drivers and vehicles 'cause nobody had a problem with any of the Douglas Creek obstacles.
We were honored to be in the presence of a beautifully maintained Right Hand Drive Land Rover Defender - equipped with a turbo-diesel! All the rigs were great, but... That one was special, and we all knew it. Three dogs. Three kids. A great group. There might have been a bit of a football game... And there might have been a spud gun present...
Some great cooking happened, I cooked venison steak with onions on my 40+ year old SVEA 123 white gas stove. There MIGHT have been a rather large chunk of tree trunk burned as a campfire... All was well with Saturday. Exactly as expected!
Then Sunday.
Oh, it started out just peachy. Warm. Sunny. A 110 pound malamute walked into my backpacking tent to wake me. :) Well, I had unzipped the tent fly, so that must have been an invitation My dog Clark looked at this furry beast twice his size and said "hello, would you like to come in, since you're inside anyway?"
Breakfast was cooked. Good coffee was made. Camp was taken down. Rigs were packed. The "adventurous route" was decided on for our exit.... Oh ya, it was indeed!
And so we started... Quickly I was regretting the decision. The snow had recently melted, and in some areas, it was still melting... A little "soft" for my liking. Somewhere I missed a crucial turn. We were in the bottom of a deep canyon, with no apparent way out except to backtrack. A drone was used to recon. I hiked for about an hour. I figured out where we were, but not how to proceed onwards. We decided to turn back.
One by one our vehicles made their way out of the canyon. Some used tire chains, all or almost all were helped by the three pair of Max Trax. Shovel work was done. Some were winched. Only one vehicle made it back up that grade without assistance; a Range Rover driven by Sebastien. He made it look as easy as driving down the highway. This paragraph doesn't adequately describe the teamwork involved as we worked together to get all of the rigs back up the canyon, and out to the main route.
Finally we made it back to Douglas Creek and headed for home. It had been a mighty long day!
I hope others who participated in this great NWOL team event will post their photos and stories as well.
Sebastien:
Great photos & videos!
And yes, I was so impressed with the way everyone pulled together to get the rigs up, out of that canyon!
You sir, were a strong part of that team! You and Jonathan. Good job guys. We needed some young strong guys helping. Thanks!
It was a good trip.
Guy
Thank you again Guy for guiding us through such an amazing area. I kept wonderful memories of this trip and I am still amazed how everyone worked together as a team when the going got rough. Too bad the weekend was over because another night by the campfire would have allowed us to continue bonding over this amazing trip.
Here are my pics and videos
This is INSANE! So awesome... fantastic capture of some clearly great times!
Looks like a fun trip (albeit a bit epic).Thanks for sharing the pics. I particularly enjoyed seeing the variety of vehicles. I look forward to joining you with my kids in the future!
Wish I could have stayed the night. Really wanted to try the adventurous route!
Brandon, so great meeting yalls and so good to hear Cam is ok! Gr8 pics too. Cant believe the quality of drone vids. Hope to see your family right after the rally as we are putting together a trip into the whiskey dick. May be a day and or an overnighter.
Thanks Brandon!
What an amazing weekend (with only one sour note). Mine started with an 03:30 rise on Friday, to blast to Bend Oregon and hang out with the great folks at CVT while they mounted up my new RTT.
After meeting up with the wife and kids for a Blazer game and spending the night in Portland, two of the boys and I headed for Wenatchee on Saturday morning to meet up with the crew.
We turned off the pavement around 12:45 to air down quickly and head up the hill in hopes to catch the crew having lunch before the first big crossing of Douglas Creek.
With nobody at the crossing, I was sure we were way behind at this point and so we blasted up the canyon to see if we could catch up. After running all the way up Slack Canyon and seeing nobody but a local Sheriff, it appeared that we were somehow ahead of the crew, which meant we got first dibs on a camp spot.
The RTT is amazingly simple to set up and tear down, made even easier by the fact that it's not 7 feet in the air on top of the Jeep. I can reach every strap and buckle from the ground and walk all the way around. After only about 15 or 20 minutes, the rest of the crew arrived and settled in.
Being so early in the day (~1:30pm at this point), we had lots of time to hike to the top of the ridge and hang out around camp for the afternoon.
Views from the very top were amazing. If you look really hard you can see camp in the bottom...
Evening set in and we made dinner and gathered around the campfire. Nothing special, some kindling and twigs mostly.
Sunday morning was very leisurely. Breakfast, some drone play time, potato gun target practice, and then finally rolled out around 11:00am...or was it Noon with the time change??
After some discussion, we decided to take the "adventurous" way out instead of heading back down the Canyon, and boy were we in for a day. We expected to see a little snow, and that it would be a little soggy, but my oh my did we underestimate that.
The further we got, the sloppier it got, with some dry patches on the flat and South facing areas.
By late afternoon we had made our way across the plateau to Duffy Creek, where we discovered that there was no longer a road that went through (at least at this location). Duffy Creek had long since consumed the road, and we were left with no choice but to turn around and backtrack, which was not as easy as it appeared. The final decent into Duffy creek (and now, ascent to get out of Duffy Creek canyon) was wet and covered in very wet, very slippery snow...it was in the mid 50's today. Traction devices including chains, MAXXTrax and ultimately Winches were used to get everyone up out of the canyon. Great teamwork and patience by all, including wives, partners and kids!
After a couple hours spent getting everyone up and out of Duffy Creek, we slogged back across the plateau as night fell. By the time we made our way back down the dirt to air up for the evening, we were working on ~9:00pm.
Tired, hungry and lamenting returning to work the next morning, we pointed the rig West and headed for Seattle. ETA...12:30am Monday morning.
Already looking forward to the next trip. Thanks Guy for another memorable Wenatchee area weekend, this is becoming one of my favorite parts of the state. It was awesome to see some old friends and meet new ones...this is what Overlanding is all about!
p.s. we saw a doc on Monday for good measure and Camden is A-OK!
Vicki posted those. I have several more stills and a few vids too, but cant get them to load on my chrome book. GRRRRRR. I'm gonna run to walleys and get a usb/SD card adapter so we can put on her laptop. maybe then we can put here. Used a hose for about an hour today then my pressure washer to make a sad attempt to remove mud! LOL. Success,,,,,,,,? Not so much.
Cool photos Mark! Thanks
Was wondering how the trip went, assumed it was a blast, great weather. Really bummed we had to back out. Sounds like it would have been fun getting the big red pig out of there... (oh well, at least I go to go to a Harbor Freight sale, you know how rare those are)
Mark, it was great meeting you, and THANKS for all the help winching rigs up that hill! Great Cherokee - love those home-built bumpers & rack! Shoot me an e-mail when you can M700miner@nwi.net
Thanks again for a gr8 trip Guy! I know we had a few MINOR unplanned events, but overall a very fun albeit exciting run. I'll try and git some pics and maybe a cpl short vid clips in the next day or so. I first need to get the shovel and dig a bit of mud off so I cam make an attempt to wash the Jeep. So hope the little guys knee is all ok, what a super star he is! Most kids his age with a bumped knee would have required a BIT more TLC! Hopefully someone has a cpl more pics of "THE LOG!" LOL
We are anxiously looking forward to the next group trip!
Tire chains were a huge help in snow and mud. The old style link chains were far better than my new cable chains.
Couldn't resist another photo of this classic overlanding rig!
Brandon's Jeep and trailer were awesome!
Marks well set-up Cherokee was Very Useful in helping other vehicles.