Dust to Snow 5-11-2019

Area for everyone to post pics and reports of new runs and events.

Moderator: SPR

User avatar
tobyw
Posts: 1879
Joined: Wed Mar 14, 2007 10:00 am
Location: Under the hood...

Dust to Snow 5-11-2019

Postby tobyw » Sun May 12, 2019 6:26 am

With baseball and soccer seasons in full swing, it was a miracle to find a 24-hour window on the calendar that didn't involve a sports field somewhere. As soon as the anomaly was discovered and verified, a plan was made to make the best use of the rare window of opportunity. Wheelin trip!!

In attendance would be Dan and Jenn in their brand new 2019 RZR 4-seater, OG with co-pilot Maverick in Ginger, my boy minion and his buddy in the RZR, and I brought the flatty. We met up at Maverik at 0800 and headed Westward with the warm sun already doing it's thing above the horizon behind us. It was going to be a beautiful day in the hills:

Image

The rigs were offloaded and prepped for the trails at the Nasty Creek corrals:

Image

Trail conditions down low were dry and dusty, although not mid-summer dusty. We quickly made our way up to the first hogs back for a sip of water and to soak up some of that sunshine:

Image

Image

Image

From there we pushed on toward Ewe Neck in hopes of making it all the way to the snow cabin above Blue Lake. Fortunately or unfortunately, things got interesting:

Image

It was 60+ degrees outside, and we were wheeling in multi-feet-deep snow! Yahtzee!! The RZR's both struggled here, so after several valiant efforts both OG and I strapped a RZR onto our Jeep's and we continued on up the shelf road. Although we were making reasonable time, it was clear we would not be making it all the way to the snow cabin... I unhitched the RZR behind me and took a quick scouting trip further up the trail, and found this:

Image

Upon returning back to the rest of the group, it was discovered that OG and Dan were both stuck, with the tow strap tight between them:

Image

We first tried to winch OG forward, but that ended up snapping my tow strap which was being used as a tree saver:

Image

The next plan was to try and dig the 4-seater RZR out and somehow manhandle it to get slack in the strap so that it could then be used as the tree saver to get OG unstuck. When that effort proved futile, the lightbulb finally went off; I sent the minion under OG's rig to snake the winch cable under it and back to the RZR, so when the winch was sucked in it would pull the two rigs together:

Image

Image

Image

Worked like a charm, and now everyone was mobile again. In our best Austin Powers, we all turned around on the narrow shelf roadbed and headed back down to find a spot for a late lunch (the boy photobombed the panoramic shot :roll: :

Image

OG and I reintroduced a few psi's into the tires at this point, since we had dropped them to about 3psi while battling the snow and we had a lot of elevation to drop before getting back to the corrals:

Image

On the way back down, the RZR's took the opportunity to play in a few of the snow drifts:

Image

Image

Image

Jen snapped a fun picture of what 71 years of Jeep evolution looks like:

Image

We loaded the outfits back up and headed for Ahtanum, where earlier in the day we had spied a brand new slushy station at the convenience store. Score!!!

Image

Overall it was a great day, and plans are already being made for a return assault on the elusive cabin :thu:
Yep, I've wheeled one of those, too...
Image

OldGreen
Posts: 4502
Joined: Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:21 am
Location: coming or going?

Re: Dust to Snow 5-11-2019

Postby OldGreen » Thu May 16, 2019 6:37 pm

This was fun. We should do this more. Like every day.


Return to “Recent Run Reports - All Other Runs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests