(Here’s wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving. And here’s a story for you when things get a little slow. )
I need to be more careful of what I wish for. Having witnessed our first two children’s home births, I developed a desire to deliver a baby myself. And that’s just what I ended up doing some nine years later when our third child decided to arrive in a hurry before the midwife could get to our house. It had its moments, but worked out in the end.
During our recent 1700 mile tour of the wilds of Eastern Oregon in our new Promaster van, I chickened out on a planned back roads trip to Shirk Ranch, because I was a bit concerned about the condition of the primitive road, having had some hairy moments on the 25 mile overland detour to the South Harney Lake hot spring. The van was new, it’s not 4WD, it has a long wheelbase (159″), and I really didn’t want to have to call for a wrecker (if there was cell coverage) from the middle of nowhere.
Since then I came to regret that decision and developed a hankering to find out just what the Promaster could handle in terms of rough back roads. This past weekend I found out, in considerable detail; I now know its capabilities and limitations all too well. And due to the latter, I feel somewhat lucky to have made it home, and in the van.
Derrick Cave plays a special role in our family in Oregon. When my older son Ted (above) dropped out of sixth grade to home school in the spring of 1995, he and I decided to kick that off his geology, geography, history and automobile driving studies with a big trip to explore Eastern Oregon. We packed my Coleman tent in our ’85 Jeep Cherokee (the perfect vehicle for the trip), and headed east. Our first night out was at Derrick Cave, a quarter-mile long lava tube cave, formed when the outer layer of a lava flow cools and hardens while the hot inner layer continues to flow and melt its way deeper into the ground. This results in a tunnel-like cave.
On that trip we also visited and climbed into Fort Rock, a massive volcanic tuff ring (picture from the web).
We also explored Crack In The Ground, Hole-in-the-Ground, Big Hole, and The Lost Forest. A deep first immersion in geology for one day, before we headed off to the John Day Fossil Beds and other attractions further east. We both fell in love with Eastern Oregon.
And we’ve been back to Derrick Cave several times since, the last time with my younger brother in the Chinook about eight years ago. One time I even took five teenage boys (three from Austria) and all our gear for an extended camping trip in the ’92 Dodge Caravan. The way we always went was from the south, from the Fort Rock-Christmas Valley area, the blue route in this Google map (14 miles).
It starts out as a good gravel road past the BLM regional office, and gets progressively more primitive, with one moderately challenging uphill section that was a bit of a stretch in the Caravan, given the load. This shot from the web shows a Honda Civic coming down it, in the spring when the road is moist and more compacted. A couple of miles before the cave, the road goes through a ranch, and one has to open and close gates to keep the cows in.
When Stephanie had to fly out last week to Iowa to stay with her mom due to medical issues, I decided to take Will back to Derrick Cave, as he’s been hankering for a trip in the new van. He could only be gone Saturday night, so we couldn’t plan on going much further. But I decided to approach from the north this time, so that we could also stop at South Ice Cave and spend more time on back roads. As in fulfilling that desire.
This route starts in La Pine, and heads east on NFR (National Forest Road) 22, which is paved for the first 20 miles or so. After that there’s gravel, and eventually the roads become more and more primitive (dirt). We never saw another person once we left La Pine. I had taken part of this route once going north from Derrick Cave in the Cherokee, and remembered that it had a few tricky steep and rocky sections, but since we would be going downhill, I figured the Promaster could handle it, going slowly.
And then we would head down and out to the south on the better roads I was familiar with (first map). I knew there was a certain risk element, especially this late in the year when there’s hardly anyone out, but the weather was perfect; sunny, and it hadn’t rained out there yet, so the roads would be dry, meaning no mud holes to swallow us up.
I’ve been showing you Google maps, but I’m a bit old school and rely on my Oregon Road and Recreation Atlas (as well as another one, the DeLorme Atlas and Gazateer), and here’s the route (in blue) I planned to take from South Ice Cave, where we had our lunch. The (big) problem with these maps is that (a) it doesn’t show all the roads out there, and (b) not all pictured road segments are numbered (National Forest Roads are all numbered). That means one has to guess at times. That can be a major problem.
To bring this point home, here’s a close-up of this same route using Google maps, which shows the warren of other roads (there’s a lot of them), but doesn’t give the numbers, calling them “unnamed road”. That’s one of the reasons I don’t use Google in the first place, and rely on the recreation paper atlas. It’s easy to take a wrong turn.
The first problem happened when we suddenly ran into a closed wire-fence gate (at the red arrow), with a BLM sign saying “Seasonal Closure – Dec.1 – March 15”. What? It’s only November 17! And it’s dry and sunny! And this wasn’t just an easily-opened one; it was pretty solidly wired together. Dang!
So I had to figure out a new route on the atlas, short of heading home.
The yellow line shows my new route, backtracking to FS23, then up to Fox Butte and then down FR2235, which is also Derrick Cave Road (some of the time). So far so good. That is, until we had headed south on 2235 several miles, and hit a pretty nasty rocky downhill segment (upper red marking). We took it slow and easy, and navigated around the tallest rocks, not wanting to knock of my underfloor graywater tank, or worse.
I told Will to shoot a video. It came out terrible, a combination of a cheap $50 phone and difficult lighting. But one gets a sense of the rocks and movement, if not the terrain outside.
And then a mile or two later we hit another one (second red segment); this one was scary. Steep, curving, the road tilted heavily to avoid huge rocks, giant ruts, and more rocks. Yikes! But going back up the previous section was not a good option either. So I took a deep breath and plunged ahead, very slowly and gingerly, knowing we were now committed to a one way trip. Will was too…something…to shoot a video; my risk tolerance is bigger than his, at least in these kinds of things. I should have made him get out to shoot me going down. We made it ok, but I knew there was no going back up this chute.
We finally got to the Derrick Cave pull off, parked, and hiked the last quarter mile to the cave. Here’s Will ready to plunge in with one of the two little cheap flashlights I remembered to buy at the last minute.
A little ways in there are a couple of “skylights”, where the tube’s ceiling collapsed. It’s wonderful looking up from the dark cave into the bright sunshine out there and the trees overhead. A very different perspective on things.
I didn’t take any shots inside, but here’s one from the web. Someone else is gazing up at the sunny world overhead before plunging into the dark abyss.
If you’d like to take a tour of the whole cave, someone has uploaded videos. When the kids were younger, we would go all the way to the very end, on our bellies. This time, we stopped a bit short of that. But to honor a tradition, at the end of the cave we always turn our flashlights off to experience…true, utter, absolute darkness. It’s pretty intense. Not for the claustrophobic.
Having satiated ourselves on darkness and lavacicles, we drove further down the road a mile or two, to a mini-tuff ring (in the background), a great camping spot.
We climbed up the jagged lava formation and Will took this shot of the van down below. Yes, that’s a massive set of three power lines back there, which sends Bonneville Power Administration hydro power from the Columbia River down to Southern Oregon (and beyond). I took the dog for a long walk up in the hills beyond them, and even in this intensely dry weather, the crackling of the lines overhead was very audible.
It was shaping up to be a very pleasant trip. We’d cook our traditional Niedermeyer pan-fried burritos, read the stack of New Yorkers I brought along, step outside to howl at the moon, spend a pleasant night snoozing, and then have an easy drive down Derrick Cave Road to Fort Rock, see a few other sights, and head home. Or so we thought.
(from the web)
At about 1:30, I became aware of the dog being agitated by the back door. Did I forget to let him go pee before bed? Or did he hear an animal? I got up and took him out. By this time the moon had set and the stars were absolutely…stellar. Mind blowing, actually. 5,000 feet up, perfectly dry air, and no lights anywhere. One forgets, living in town.
The dog ran around a bit, agitated, but didn’t do anything. Hmm; must have been an animal.
At what turned out to be about 3:30, I was awakened from a deep sleep by the dog jumping around in the van. I smelled something terrible. I opened my eyes and in the dim light from the inverter control panel, I saw him jumping up on the driver’s seat, facing the window. What the…? He’s never done that. And then he lifted his tail and shot out a geyser of liquid, like out of a hose. It landed on the side of the passenger seat and the floor between them. This was highly irregular; he’s never done anything like this. The overpowering stench made it certain this was unfortunately not a bad dream.
I really didn’t want to believe this was real. Fortunately I had brought a fresh roll of paper towels. I opened the top of the toilet box to get out the 5 gallon poo bucket (we hadn’t used it), which had a plastic bag in it. When I lifted out the bucket, I saw that there was a good inch of pee on the bottom of the plywood toilet box I had built. Will had not understood how it works, and had pulled the plastic poo bag over the urine diverter, which meant that our several evening pee sessions had not gone into the one gallon pee bottle, but were diverted to the floor of the unit. Great; we get to clean up pee and poo!
I cleaned up the diarrhea as best as I could, but some of it was unreachable in the many nooks and crannies of the framework under the seat. Then the urine was sponged up; that was relatively easy. By this time it was getting on about 4:30, and I couldn’t imagine getting back to sleep, with that powerful stench from the remnants that were unreachable. So I decided to just get a very early start home. Will stayed in his sleeping bag.
I drove in the darkness a couple of miles. I could see a single light in the distance from the ranch we would be crossing through. Then I passed a sign that said “Locked Gate Ahead”. What?? It’s never been locked; one just closes it after passing. But when I got to the gate, it was a newer one, and a very sturdy one, and very solidly locked with a chain and two padlocks. WTF? Another early seasonal road closure? I couldn’t believe it; we were now trapped.
This presented a very real problem, as there was no way I could get back up those difficult sections. Will got out his phone and Googled “Derrick Cave Road Closure” and told me that the road had been closed permanently in 2014(!) by the ranch owners, since there had never actually been an easement over it. It had just been traditional to let folks through. Shoot; back in the cold war, part of the cave had been designated a fallout shelter, and food and water were stored in it for that purpose. And there was no easement to get there? I guess the rancher got tired of what was an ever-increasing number of folks driving through in the summer, and undoubtedly a few inconsiderate ones didn’t close the gates.
Will regurgitated a line to me that I had often used on him when he was younger; “Failure to prepare is preparing for failure”, by the famous UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. True that.
While Will went back to sleep, I considered my options. Which weren’t many. Some, like running down and over the barbed wire fence were appealing initially, but lost their appeal with further consideration. Did I want to get busted for trespassing and damaging a fence? Would the cows get out? Was there another locked gate at the other end of the property, and if so, then I would be trapped inside the ranch. Not such a good idea.
I settled on an early morning visit to the ranch (seen here from above) to plead for mercy as the best bet. I drifted off for maybe an hour, read for a while, then after it got light, made breakfast. At about 8:20, I hopped the fence and walked down the road to the ranch. I passed four horses; folks here still herd their cows on the very rugged open range here with horses. They eyed me keenly. I was preparing for the inevitable greeting of barking dogs (I left our dog behind). No such luck. There was a pickup in front of the house, but the driveway that obviously is used regularly was empty. I went to the door and knocked. No answer. Nobody home. Gone for the weekend, or? The cows in the paddocks now eyed me, although not as keenly as the horses.
I walked down the road to the gate at the other end. It was open. Now my idea of breaking through the fence had a resurgence in appeal. But not for long; I really didn’t feel right about that. I suppose if we couldn’t get out any other way…
I decided that we could always call 911 to get connected to some local authority that might be able to find the ranch owner. Or maybe the BLM had access to one of the two padlocks?
But this was going to be a messy drawn-out affair, and I decided not to pursue that before we at least gave it a shot to get out via the way we had come. Maybe I’m underestimating the Promaster’s capabilities? Worst case, we back down and call for help.
So we headed back the way we came. And when we got to that difficult section, I just went for it. But the dirt out here turns to a fine dust after a whole season without any rain, and the front wheels just couldn’t get enough traction. If it had been moist and compacted, or consistently rockier, we might have had a chance, but the deep pockets of powdery sand between the rocks made it impossible. I got perhaps a third of the way up. My mission to probe the Promaster’s limits was a success; I had run squarely up against them.
The old Dodge Chinook might have made it, with its dual rear tires and RWD. I once surprised a bunch of Jeep and 4×4 owners camping in a very remote lake by driving up a similar rough, steep rocky road (not this one pictured). I knew that this was a trade-off with the Promaster.
Yes, a Mercedes Sprinter 4×4 would have likely made it, although its 4×4 system is not really a true off-road system, but just the 4-Matic with three open differentials and electronic brake intervention on spinning wheels. The real thing involves locking or limited-slip differentials. Still.
These Sprinter 4x4s are the current fashion-status vehicle out here in the West, the equivalent of driving a Coupe deVille in the early 60s and a Mercedes 450SEL in the 70s. This one in my neighborhood ferries kids to school, but I’ve never seen it dirty. I bet my Promaster has more dirt under its belt than 90% of these. But they look cool, if way too tall in my eyes.
And they are expensive and not easy to come by, as it’s a limited production option, and one not even currently available until the next gen Sprinter goes back in production in the spring of 2019. Used ones? How about this 2016 Sprinter 4×4 conversion for sale at a mere $128,950? I’ve got a total of $37k into my new Promaster, including all the hardware/materials for the conversion.
I suppose a RWD Ford Transit with the optional dual rear wheels might have scaled this obstacle. Maybe. Maybe not. But the FWD Promaster sure wasn’t going to. It was part of the trade-off for its other advantages in packaging and price.
So I backed down a hundred yards or so to where I could turn around, and headed back with my tail between my legs. About a mile down the road Will said: “Google maps says if you take this road off to the right here, it shows a continuous route out to another road that runs back down into the valley to Fort Rock.
He showed me the phone. Yes, I could see that, but I also saw several issues with it. As per my paper map, it would presumably take us via that closed off seasonal closure gate. And it was a long way to go, on a route I had no experience with, and no idea if the roads were passable or not. Google will find a road, but won’t identify them and guarantee you’ll get there. As a matter of fact, a few people have come to their demise by following back roads from Google maps in the winter and never getting back out.
This satellite version of part of the route shows the terrain, and some of the other roads in the area (this was not available up there to us, because we were now out of cell range and his map was in memory and working from GPS). But then what other options were there? It was the only possible other way out. So off we went, and the road was not too bad.
We eventually got up to the higher plateau, and passed a small road turning off to the right. My intuition told me that it just might get us back to the roads we came in on from La Pine, but Will lobbied to keep going this way. Ok; let’s try it your way. But after several very slow miles bumping along, and an increasing number of tricky sections, I realized this might be another trap, and a worse one at that. We had several more miles ahead of us before we would even start heading down and meet NFR18, a better road. And now we were out of cell range.
This was the low point of the trip. I stopped the van and got out to ponder our predicament. Will was getting increasingly anxious. Our gas was getting lowish. I really didn’t want to be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest human some 30-40 rough miles away. I had never yet gotten stuck or lost out in the boonies, and I was really struggling with the possibility of this being the first time.
We had gone a long way, but could still turn back and probably make it to the ranch, and call for help there. Or we could try that other little road we passed a few miles back. Let’s give that a shot.
So we backtracked (white line), and took that turn off. It wasn’t much more than a couple of tracks through the trees, but it was flat, and Lo! After a mile or two (blue line), we hit NFR700! That was very encouraging, but I was still worried about hitting that closed gate. But we never did hit it, as somehow the route was a bit different than the one we tried to take on the way in.
When we passed this fenced off champion giant Western Juniper, I knew we were on the right track, as I’d seen it on the map as a landmark.
And when we hit NFR23, I knew we were home free. The improved gravel road looked like a freeway to us. And it just got better and better. On paved road 22, about three miles from La Pine, we saw the first other human on the whole trip: a white National Forest 4×4 pickup and its driver, heading the other way. Off to close more roads, ahead of the posted schedule? These NF guys are so efficient!
After a hearty mid-day meal at a cafe in La Pine, we gassed up and headed home. All’s well that ends well.
Postscript: Although cell coverage was spotty, I’m going to make a point to use Google maps in addition to my paper maps. I’ve been zooming in on this Google satellite image (maximum zoom here), and on a large monitor, it’s pretty impressive the amount of detail available. One can see every tree, downed tree trunk, and even each sage bush. And it puts the roads into context of the geography, in satellite mode. I do need to switch my cell service to Verizon, as my current discount service (Ting, on Sprint’s network) has less coverage and doesn’t give me anything but voice and text when I’m away from major towns and cities.
But I’m still going to keep my two big atlases in the van too.
Glad you made it back.
I had an “adventure” about 15 years ago when someone decided to try a back road in Southern Utah that turned into deeper mud then their SUV could handle. As this was pre cell phone we ended up hiking several hours in the muck to call for a tow, and then back up the hill to wait with the truck. Shortly after getting us out, the tow truck got stuck, and as it was dark at that point we left it and gave the driver a ride back to town.
Not sure the last time I actually looked at it, but the Delorme Michigan Atlas has been within reach in at least my last 4 cars.
Looks like you had fun!! Paul, I’ve driven 2500 sieres pro masters daily for work for the last 5 years. They drive like a badminton bird. They go wherever you point them and the back end wiggles in the breeze. Fantastic on pavement, almost too good, easy to be over driven in heavy rain because all of the weight is up front.
Ive been “towed” once out of a customers “driveway.” As soon as the cleats in the tire is full of mud, you’re stuck. Road tires are too tight to clear themselves. I got stuck in 1/2 inch of slick mud in between 2 low humps I couldn’t power over. No traction at that point. Got “towed” by an old man in a Datsun 720 king cab with 10’ chains.
Glad y’all had fun!
Get some max tracks.
Now THAT was one heck of a trip! Makes every trip I’ve ever been on seem like a piece of cake. I had actually taken the Aerostar on several dirt/gravel back roads before. Besides the rear window getting dirty, nothing really happened (still drove carefully though). Putting all-terrain tires on my Ranger would make these roads a complete non-issue. Obviously the roads where I live aren’t near as bad as they are near Derrick Cave. I can empathize on all those closed gates–having to pay the price for someone else’s mistake. I remember something you said in the article you wrote about for the ProMaster & Transit on November 16, 2013: “I don’t consider the traction issue to be significant, except of course when it is, like a steep hill with loose gravel or snow. I’ve taken the Chinook on some roads that would normally be considered 4WD, and its dual rear wheels and short wheelbase (129″) allowed it to get through a couple of places I would not take a ProMaster on. But I think my days of trying to push the limits like that are probably best left behind.”
Great story, and I’m really enjoying these looks at Eastern Oregon.
Apparently snow chains for FWD off roading is a thing, maybe a set would have helped? Wouldn’t have helped with the ground clearance or steepness of hills though.
And I hope you can get the various excrements cleaned out of the Promaster.
Something to look into. As noted below, the remaining bits of poop dried up within a day to inoffensive little crumbs. The pee was easy to sponge up that night.
I’ve dealt with worse: kids vomiting, mainly.
You definitely had some tense moments on this trip. Glad all turned out well.
Echo that.
Have a great Thanksgiving
Wow, that’s an exciting read for a quiet Thanksgiving morning! I’m glad that when we visited eastern Oregon about 12 years ago, we only had a rental Malibu — therefore little temptation to explore off-road.
When I was a teenager, my dad and I drove cross-country in our Mazda 323GTX. I desperately wanted to explore some unpaved roads, so I plotted a few routes to ghost towns that I thought were reachable. We tried one, in Nevada, and it turned out to be much rougher than I expected (not surprisingly, in hindsight). We turned around after a few miles, and dad said “no more of that.” The thought of getting stuck out there has made me skittish about taking cars off-road ever since.
This summer, we took our own kids out west, and among other things visited Toadstool Geologic Park in extreme northwest Nebraska (an excellent destination, and well worth the journey). I’d read conflicting reports about the quality of the 12-mi. long unpaved road heading there, so we decided not to take our Odyssey but instead pile two families into my brother-in-law’s Expedition. A safe move, but when we got to Toadstool, two of the other cars there were Honda Civics — your picture of the Civic here reminded me of that. Well, better safe than sorry I guess, and the Expedition was a better choice anyway.
I hope you all enjoy a nice quiet weekend after last week’s adventures!
I think I need to hear more about the 323GTX, one of my bucket list cars since new, also known as the budget Audi Quattro!
The Toadstool story is just like when I took the Rav4 down the horrific road/trail/ruts to Lake Kintla in the northernmost part of Glacier National Park and was feeling very proud. Proud, that is, until the LeSabre showed up towing a trailer of canoes a few minutes later.
It was a spectacular car. My folks bought it new in 1988, and then I bought it from them about 10 years later. I intended to keep it forever, but of course plans change, and I sold it in 2004 in order to buy an engagement ring for my (now) wife.
I haven’t seen another one since, and since most of them wound up being raced, they’ve all but disappeared from the earth. Even when I sold mine, it was one of the few non-modified versions out there.
I’m jealous. I’m not surprised you haven’t seen one since, they only sold around 800 or so over two years. The four door had the GT, same engine but not AWD. They probably sold even fewer of those.
I search for them occasionally and there is one that’s probably in average (i.e. needy) condition that’s been for same in New Mexico for a while now.
Thanks for the pic, it looks (looked) great!
Gee, nothing like this ever happens to me. Of course sitting in a comfy recliner while watching a movie on tv and sipping a cocktail also trades off the stunning scenery views. Oh well. And you have just provided reason number 692 why I do not have a dog.
I was waiting for you to employ the old Model T trick of turning around and backing up the hill. Those guys did it because of the gravity fuel feed, but I imagine that it would make weight transfer work for you rather than against you. How good is your back up camera?
Glad you made it and I hope the interior cleanup wasn’t too bad. I think we can skip the CC DIY on that one. I am guessing there will be no trace of new car smell left after this trip?
Backing up would be a viable approach if the road was fairly straight and even, like a graded gravel road or such. The problem here was that one had to position the van very precisely between large rocks that stick up quite high and a very deep rut formed from a rain gully. Just getting down it was very tricky, positioning the van between the obstacles and not letting the wheels fall into the deep gully. And this whole section was in a curve! Sure, the thought occurred to me, but after having gone down it, I knew it was out of the question.
As to the clean-up: Poo is much better than some animal pee, especially cat pee, because the pee has specific long-lasting marking chemicals.
What makes poo smell is the bacteria at work. As soon as it’s dried out, there’s no more smell, because the bacteria die and what little is left is just food fiber. We were having extremely dry weather; by the next day, the smell was gone, and the dried crumbs were fairly easy to vacuum. And if there’s any left in hidden cracks, no one will ever know. 🙂
because the pee has specific long-lasting marking chemicals.
My parents discovered that when the neighbour cat came in and peed on our guest bed. We thought spraying some ammonia would eliminate the odour. Nope, a few weeks later, our visiting friend woke us up in the middle of night, complaining of weird odour.
The moment the mattress store opened in the morning, we bought the new one…
I thought of the backing up thing also, and also figured it was not a situation for that. Maybe a muddy or snowy short straight hill.
JPC, that reminds me not of Model Ts but the Austin ambulance in the movie “Ice Cold in Alex”. Dunno if that one made inroads stateside.
After a huge struggle, they back it up a sand dune, engine off, with the crank handle.
We had a similar experience back when I was a kid with my family somewhere in the Mojave Desert looking for yet another abandoned mining camp purportedly with a hot spring nearby. But we made it back too, people vastly underestimate the apparently significant off-road abilities of a ’77 Pontiac Ventura on white-wall tires from Montgomery Ward. I’m surprised we never tried to get a rooftop tent for it.
The Little Man story makes me feel a lot better about our own projectile vomiting kids though…
Anyway, good to hear you made it back and aren’t still out there today feasting on a half-full bag of turkey jerky or whatever else happened to still be in the glovebox from the last trip.
I see people putting really aggressive off-road tires on ProMasters. I wonder how much they help. https://youtu.be/dgOYIaN72cI?t=163
Undoubtedly they do, up to a point. It’s something I would likely do if I decide to keep doing a fair bit of backroading. There’s also a 1.5″ lift kit for the front end available.
That was quite a tale. It’s quite a sweaty feeling when such things happen. I did something similar with a friend in my ’20’s and we got a Holden Gemini (Chev Spectrum) grounded on a remote 4wd track after a long bush hike. Minimum walk to help was going to be 8 or 9 hours, so nowhere near as remote as you, but it did surely get my attention. Desperation after two hours of trying somehow gave us the musculature to heave it free.
As for the dog, you make him sound like a beer tap, albeit one with a nasty brew: lift the handle and brown stuff shoots out. Personally, I’m with JPC above about doggies, and here, combined with the humanoid pee-spray, I would have entirely abandoned the car to nature and walked anyway.
Gorgeous scenery.
The aboriginal people here ascribe religious significance to landscape, and certain gums of great antiquity (5oo+ years) were often meeting or ceremony places for generations. I photographed one once, and was astonished to see all sorts of aboriginal faces and figures in the shapes and colours in the photo of the tree when I got home. (Wasn’t just me, btw. Anyone I pointed it out to could see them too). And I’ll be damned if I don’t see traces of old faces in that Western Juniper, though nowhere near as clearly. A guide post with inbuilt guides for you leading you back, if you’re feeling philosophical?
Though maps and Google would still be my preferred choice too…
what a great adventure.
Another great trip report! I’m sure this will be a trip both you and your son won’t soon forget.
I had a somewhat similar incident when I was 17 and deer hunting in northern Wisconsin. A friend and I got stuck in some sand in my 2wd Ranger out in the middle of nowhere. This was in the early days of cell phones, so there was no service. We hiked out to the nearest intersection, and waited about 2 hours hoping someone would come by, but no one ever did.
Since it was getting dark by this time, we “borrowed” a large wooden forest road sign, which we used in conjunction with my tire jack and a lot of digging with our hands in the semi frozen sand to get my truck out.
A few days later on Thanksgiving, I was making my way out to my deer stand and my truck stopped moving. Upon closer inspection, I found that my pinion gear decided to make an appearance though my differential cover.
Long story short, after a long tow to the nearest shop, a few weeks, and a lot of money, I was able to head back up north and pick up my truck.
Needless to say, I no longer venture out in the bush without adequate tools to get me out of most jams. Lesson learned!
Interesting story, I can relate to many parts
There’s no substitute for a good paper map, at least for backup, but as an alternative to Google maps or even dedicated GPS I’m a huge fan of maps.me. The app is free and simple, and the maps are based on Open Source data and are pretty complete, and easy to use offline IF you download the region in advance, which is pretty easy. The big advantage vs paper of course is using the GPS location on the phone to show you where you are on the map. I took a quick glance at this area and many/most/all? of the FS roads are designated as well as some smaller routes like Derrick Cave Trail. No gates though. I’ve used maps.me all over the West, in Ecuador and on some very remote dirt roads in central Baja.
Oh, and a great story, good outcome, and makes me feel like a wimp for switching to 4wd 30 years ago for exploration. And your van is way nicer than my tent.
Great story Paul. I have been in a similar situation(s) myself – can’t forward, can’t go back so go to plan C
In our Search and Rescue unit we have come to rely on tablets pre-loaded with Google Earth which, as you noted, provide tremendous and relatively recent details that you can’t get from every map.
But when it all goes bad, you can’t beat a map.
Thanks for taking time to tell (and illustrate) the tale, Paul—sounds like a lifetime memory for you and your passenger.
It makes me want to return to the West, but also reminds me of my comparatively low risk tolerance. But they do say, “no risk, no reward!”
(Back) road trip! Gripping stuff.
That was an excellent read, thank you for posting it (and, seriously this whole website. Thank you!)
Did you ever find out what spooked Mr Dog so much?
He just had severe gastric distress. From what, I don’t know. We didn’t give him anything other than the usual food. He does love to forage for wild scat, and I saw him pick up and eat one on our walk earlier that afternoon. It obviously didn’t agree with him.
You might say it backfired on him…
I was a passenger in a 4×4 Sprinter a while back, climbing to the top of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. Fortunately there was no snow. The transfer case or some related mechanism made a horrible sound and we ground to a halt. After much fussing with the electric controls it freed itself and we continued in rear wheel drive mode the rest of the trip. I’ll take my old-school manual transfer case any day.
Great story. Next time try Lava Beds NM, just across the border in California. Not only a lot of accessible – some by official tour, some by yourself – lava tube caves, but also the awesome Fern Cave with pictographs, and Crystal Ice Cave in winter months. At least when I worked there.
I drove a Dodge RWD old school van for work back in the days of yore. Yes, a lot smaller than the Promaster/Sprinters – you know, the van that meant that FWD vans were “minivans”. The combination of RWD and probably 60/40 front weight bias meant that with a bit of snow or mud you were stranded. I was stranded in fucking Orinda CA once when there was a (rare) inch or two of snow. It couldn’t go up a slight grade.
Back in the 70’s I had a FWD Renault 16. No Google maps. I had some usual backcountry map (those USGS ones, or whatever they were) that showed a road between things somewhere in Northern California hilly back country. Very back country. It turned into an insane rocky dirt path. I remember a turn with a drop off on one side and hill on the other and loose dry dirt with sections missing on the drop off side around a curve. I floored it and it dug in and kept going and lived to tell about it.
Speaking of various vans, it’s kind of interesting that all the home grown USA! USA! USA! vans were suddenly replaced by various sizes of Euro and Japanese vans a number of years ago.
My son and I were there years ago, in the Caravan. But we didn’t explore much except for one cave, as we were heading down to the Sierras. Will go back.
Back in the early 70s i used to take my VW Beetle on all sorts of Colorado Rockies jeep/mining “roads”, but VWs are ideal for that.
Would tire chains have made any difference? I have zero experience with chains – I’ve been fortunate enough to have the choices to either stay home or take as long as I’ve needed or have a 4WD vehicle when available traction is less than great.
Fun read while fighting off a turkey coma…
You used your wisdom and guile combined to make your way out safely. Thank you for sharing.
Happy to hear you made it through, besides more aggressive tires and the front lift kit that’s available, it wouldn’t hurt to carry a couple of long tow straps and a come along, they got me out of a couple of tight spots when I used to drive my 2wd C10 on roads that 4wd was really needed. A small electric winch that can be moved from front to rear bumpers (hitch receiver mounted) might be a good idea as well. Be glad the rain stayed away!
Enjoyable read as always Paul! I hope Stephanie’s mother is doing alright.
Sounds like a fun trip. Reminds me of the time I helped my friend, who doesn’t drive, take his sick dog to the vet. The dog peed, shat and vomited all over the interior of my car. My friend spent the rest of the day cleaning it.