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Mossy TrailsHarrison AreaMay 6/06 Written by Greg Photos by Greg and Boat Boy On Friday evening, Boat Boy phoned. The conversation went something like this: Boat Boy: Are you riding this weekend? Me: Hadn't planned on it. Why, what's up? Boat Boy: My wife's out of town, so I'm not sailing this weekend, and I wouldn't mind going for a ride. Me: Do you want to go tomorrow or Sunday? Twist my rubber arm... We settled on Saturday, as the weather was supposed to be marginally nicer than Sunday. We decided that we'd explore the Chehalis area, as the trailhead was reasonably close (only an hour away) and I wanted to find a loop road that we had been on about 10 years ago, and a couple of trails that we'd been on about 5 years ago. The last time Boat Boy had his quad out was in September! That's um, nine months ago. Well, his name is Boat Boy, not Quad Boy. So he figured he'd better check to see if his quad even started. Nope, when he switched the ignition on, nothing lit up. The battery was totally dead. He topped up the fluid, and stuck it on the charger for the night. I promised to bring my ATV jumper cables (which I got from Canucklehead). The battery was still toast in the morning, so Boat Boy pull-started the quad to load it onto his truck. We met up at the White Spot for breakfast, then hit the closest Canadian Tire to buy a new battery. He installed the battery in the parking lot, to make sure everything was good before we hit the trail. Paul Mitchell stopped by to say hi as he had just set up an awning for his wife at a neighbouring store, and I gave him my remaining stock of yellow and pink Quads.ca stickers. We finally arrived at the crossroads, and Boat Boy had the bright idea to drive our trucks to the area we wanted to explore, rather than ride our quads all the way up the gravel road. So we bumped our way up the road, and took the turn-off to the North Chehalis campsite. We found a handy spot to park, and when we got out, Boat Boy wondered aloud just why the heck we had driven our trucks this far when we could have been riding our quads in comfort. Hm, good question! We headed off in search of the loop road, and I soon discovered that it was the same road I had been on a few months ago, but had gotten stopped by snow. This time we made it as far as the back of the mountain where we encountered a rock slide. It was almost doable if we rolled some large rocks out of the way and didn't mind some off-camber rock crawling. However, there was only two of us, and neither of us were overly motivated to move large rocks or recover a quad if something gave way. We figured that we could come back in a couple months and find that some younger, stronger, and more motivated individuals would have done the work for us. 
We turned around, and checked out another little trail. This one had a iffy-looking quad bridge over it, but I'd been over it before so I knew it would hold up to our passage. As I crossed it, the logs shifted beneath the tires. Boat Boy shot a bunch of photos just in case it collapsed beneath me. This trail branched a couple of times; on one branch we got stopped by snow. We got onto a wide, little-used, moss-covered trail that was very green. We also found a rocky trail that had been partially-eroded by rain water washing away the dirt. 
We left that area, and checked out a little hole in the bush which turned out to be a semi-decent shelf road that ended at a big drop into a valley. Along the way, I spotted what looked like a face in a moss-covered stump, so I took a photo as I thought it looked neat. 
 
We checked out another mossy trail; this one was a tight technical trail that threaded through the trees (how's that for alliteration!), but then just disappeared. I'm not sure if this was because nobody had used it in a long time, or if it was because the trail actually ended. At any rate, we could no longer see a path, so we turned around. 
 
We headed north up the side of the lake for a bit, then took an older branch. It ended up splitting into two; one climbed and gave a great view of the lake, and the other turned into an overgrown shelf road. A fire ring was at what looked like the end of the road for trucks, but we could see that the road actually continued on. There were lots of saplings and trees growing up through the middle of the road, making it look like a forest, but if you looked hard enough you could see where the original road was. We slowly threaded our way through the trees, sometimes having to make multi-point turns and gently flex our fender flares against the trunks. After a few kilometers of this, it finally got too narrow even for us, and we reluctantly turned around. The trail did continue on past where we were, but we could no longer fit between the trees. 
We also checked out another road with a waterfall and a fast-flowing creek crossing; I started into it but it started to get fairly deep, and since I didn't feel like getting wet or ending up with another Whoops page photo, I turned around. Hey, it's a Honda, not a Ford. Boat Boy got a few poser shots for me though. 
We figured that we'd been out long enough for the day, so we decided to head back to the trucks. We did check out another couple of side trails, but they just ended at camp sites. Just before we reached our trucks, I was drifting around a wide corner by a couple of large piles of scrap wood, when a yearling black bear stumbled out from between the piles about 20 feet in front of me, and took off running down the trail. All I could see was black bear butt as I hit the brakes, then it veered off to the right and disappeared over the edge. Another great day on the trail, and thanks to Boat Boy for motivating me to get out of the house. |
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