Adventioneering

If you read nothing else in this post, read the fact that the Garmin City Navigator: North America 2009 maps are very very bad for the Manastash area. I don’t really mind maps that are incomplete (finding some trail that is not on a map is called exploring), it’s a bit of a sin for a map to give turn-by-turn to an abandoned hiking trail that looks like you could get down it maybe on foot. With a machete. And this didn’t just happen one time.

We had JG & Evans in clementine (Orange TJ), Fran & Michael in Oliver (Green Cherokee), and Victoria & myself in Betty (Silver TJ). We took 10g of jerry cans each in the TJs and the Cherokee, well, it seemed like it had a big enough gas tank. Michael decided to leave early anyways so it didn’t turn out to be a problem.

We came in on Saturday from the I-90 side of the ridge, heading up the pretty typical Manastash Ridge Rd. We then took a bit of a overly-long route to the peak of Quartz Mountain (6296ft) where we spent the night. Spectacular 360^o views with a great showing of Rainier. You could just see Adams peaking out from behind a ridge.

The moon was out, the night was clear, the weather was great, and it was just amazing. We ate a little and drank a little and sat around and looked at the stars. There were some young wolves barking that night, you could hear them sort of circling around the camp that night.

The next morning the weather was still great and the views were still spectacular. With binoculars I spotted the wolves playing in a meadow just down from our camp. They were jumping around, and generally carrying on.

Michael & Fran left early, and the rest of us hung around into the morning and then reluctantly packed up and set off to find Moon Rocks. Victoria will be pleased that she was right and I was wrong – we did find moon rocks, not funny rocks, I had them backwards.

Getting there proved to be a real challenge as the Garmin was again totally wrong, and we ended up taking like ten miles of some (amazing looking but also very long and tiringly challenging) tracks to finally get there. We were very lost, it got to the point that we were trying to spot roads with binoculars, but eventually some basic orienteering brought us out just where we wanted to be.

The Yaesu radios also worked very well (We have the FT-whatever in betty, and then we had a vx-7 and a vx-8). So well that I heard this rumor that Evans is going to sit the tech. At one spot I ran ahead a couple of miles to spot out a potential route and everything worked as it should.

From there it was pretty easy to backtrack out, although again the maps could have been more correct; we ended up doing about a quarter of a mile through track that we could have taken on more of a real gravel road. It looks like they have put in these huge 4wd speed bumps; to keep tree rustlers out?

The vehicles did very well; and we were lucky in terms of damage (“if the vehicle still moves, it’s not broken”).

Betty: Cracked body weld in the tub corner. I think it was weak for a long time actually, we’ve had symptoms. Needs to be fixed if we want the tailgate to ever work properly again. I also nicked one of the covers on the roll cage with a tree.

Clementine: Snapped sway-bar link (I claim these are self-disconnecting on the TJ), wadded fender. Funny moment here, Clem’ isn’t lifted so at articulation without the sway-bar his swampers rub pretty badly. He had this happened and thought he broke his suspension and was stranded, but it turns out, TJ’s can flex a lot

Oliver: Cooling system boiled over several times, bashed quarter panel. I was up ahead and didn’t see but way I heard it Fran was spotting him through an off-camber and didn’t take into account gravity; either wheelspin induced slide or body roll banged it into a tree. Or the tree jumped right out. Depends who’s telling the story.

Thanks everyone for making it a great trip; next time we’ll have better maps, I promise!

Photos