Memorial Day Weekend 2015 (Cont.)
Sunday, May 24, 2015
We got our start around 9 am however, it would take us a good 4 or 5 hours with gas and store stops to traverse the distance between Evans and Elbe Hills, but it was a nice sunny day. We chose to drive into the park only to be denied camping/parking spots, and after some recon, decided we’d run back down to Horse Camp. If only we had gone here first, we might have gotten some more daylight wheelin’ in. Then BryansFab and Radicl made a quick run over to Mineral Springs to get Radicl’s pass.
About 4:30 pm we rolled out of camp now just 3 rigs to take on what we could, of Elbe Hills’ infamous trails. We had loosely decided trying to do the legendary Busywild might be too much to take on this late in the day. Once in the park we quickly found the Sunrise trail, it was a nice easy trail with a few obstacles to entertain, dropping on to Mainline and wondering some until we saw a bunch of parked rigs and heard some high revs in the forest.
Curiousity got the better of us and we walked in to see what the ruckus was. We found a bunch of local Toyota fans hammering through a slick soupy area, known as Alder Loop, and after helping them clear their rigs from the muck decided to follow them through. It wasn’t too bad with some tight stuff that gave my hifift jack a bent personality (tree carnage), and caused a winch line to be employed.
Not finding anything too difficult we were itching for more of a challenge and somehow found ourselves at the beginning of the Busywild trail about 6:30 pm. Well we were in it now and decided to punch through, having heard it was an 8 hour trail on a good day, we guessed we’d be back to camp after midnight. We found our challenge with this trail as it was tight, slick, soupy and deep, to our credit we traversed this trail in 4.5 hours, glad we only had 3 rigs, but not without some serious field fixes and carnage, as well as finding out we only completed about 1/3 of the trail.
The Busywild took out 3 beads, one valve stem, and somehow we ended up donating some rigging, including a snatch block, tree saver and a few d-rings, and some scrapes, scuffs and a push on my driver’s slider, we left under a foggy drizzle. I’d lost a fender the previous day and decided to leave it off, today I matched the opposite side, thank goodness the clips are cheap, and easy to re-install. But we all came out under our own power, and were back at camp by 11:00 pm, for a well earned night of sleep, after a quick, and late meal.
Monday, May 25, 2015
Needless to say the previous night’s outing had tuckered us out and we all decided a little extra snoozing time was necessary. We woke up about 9 ish, and made a nice breakfast, then started tearing down the camp and packing for the trip back to the Tri-Cities. We were rolling by 11:00 am up and over White Pass, with a lunch break in Yakima, and rolled into the house late in the afternoon (dumping tanks at the end of a long weekend always involves a wait at the Prosser rest stop). All in all it was one of the best trips we’ve taken yet. A great pre-run for an event we hope to hold the same time next year. Hopefully we’ll get some videos edited together showing some live action for both days, shortly… Next trip June 20th Tillamook Forest…
You must be logged in to post a comment.