April 6/2007 @ Harrison East
In Attendance:
Chris - Ford Bronco (blue)
Indir & James - Ford Explorer (brown)
Doug - Ford Ranger (black)
Thanks to Indir and James for their pictures and videos!
Meeting in Coquitlam.
A quick fuel up in Abbotsford.
The road to Agassiz.
Airing down.
Scenery time.
More scenery time.
A true poser.
We took this trail that turned out to to be a little interesting.
The sink hole was about 3' deep.
Lots of fallen trees from the recent storms.
End of the road.
We noticed this old wreck off the side of the trail.
Indir trying another side trail.
Playing in one of the many gravel pits.
The start of the old road to Clear Creek.
Climbing up the old road.
The 14 bolt meets a new rock friend.
Back on the new road. There were lots of fallen trees and small slides.
This is now as far as you can go.
One huge slide!
I'm thinking that this could take years to melt enough to be passable.
Looking back where we parked.
The other side of the slide.
Heading back through one of the smaller slides.
The big bridge crossing Big Silver Creek.
This was taken from the bridge that is the start of Kookipi Creek FSR.
If you look closely, you can see a big crack on the snow.
The snow wasn't that deep but it was slick. It was now
7pm, and we figured that we were done for the day.
We turned around and went back the way we came.
Shortly after turning around, I noticed that my steering was not as responsive as it normally was. After a quick inspection, we found that
my engine crossmember was cracked in two places, and the frame was cracked at the power steering pump. We figured that with
the crossmember for the leaf springs, I could get home fine.
That wasn't quite the case. Now I had a bad death wobble because of all the ruts in the road, so I didn't get much over 20-30 km/h.
When we got to the big bridge at Big Silver Creek, there was a car blocking the road, and some young guy down below the bridge
yelling and screaming. He told us that his buddy was standing on the side of the bridge doing a "kung-fu" type pose, and fell off.
Unfortunatley this guy was very drunk and possibly on some other substance, and that made it very hard to get any questions answered.
He then jumped in his car and took off toward Harrison. We stayed and searched the ground surrounding the bridge, just in
case his buddy didn't go in the water. We found nothing.
About 15 minutes later, the guy came screaming back up the road, yelling and screaming. We tried to calm him down, and told
him that at this point, all we could do was get back into town and notifiy the authorities, and that it would be very unlikely
that Search & Rescue would come out in the dark.
We proceeded down the road, and the guy took off in his car like he was in a race. We can't figure out how he made it, as the road
is pretty nasty in some spots.
Once back on pavement, we aired up, chatted for a few minutes, then hit the road for home. For me, the pavement made the drive a
little better, but I didn't dare go over 50-60 km/h, and drove very cautiously.
Indir took a quick drive to the Agassiz police station to report the incident. Turns out that they had already dispatched an officer as
they had several complaints of a car driving crazily, and that car matched the description and plate of the guy that we ran into.
Indir gave them good directions as to where all this happened, and the police sent another truck to check it out.
The drive wasn't to bad, but by the time we got to Deroche, things were getting worse. To try and maintain a straight line, I was having to
turn the wheel almost one complete revolution, and decided that that was way to dangerous. We then noticed that one of the steering arm studs
had broken.
The tow truck was dispatched!
I didn't get home until 2am.
Nice way to end the day.
The damage done:
Rusted exhaust hanger.
Crack #1.
Crack #2.
Crack #3
One of the steering arm studs broke.
Indir broke his right front shock mount.
It started tearing the bottom the frame.
A branch tore off my front ARB line.
This was a quick trail repair.
My rear ARB line hit my OBA tank a few to many times.
Broke it clean off.
It hit hard enought to break the (rusted) mount for the OBA tank.
Doug got a few new scratches and smashed the glass in his canopy door.
Even with all the damage, it was still a good day of wheeling!