June 2008 |
Fishing at Wollaston Lake Lodge is always a fantastic time. The location is spectacular and remote, but not without ridiculously luxurious accommodations to return to each night. To get there you fly from Winnipeg, MB to Points North, SK on a flight basically chartered by lodge.
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The start of the day in Winnipeg was VERY interesting... I'd stayed the night at a Comfort Inn near the airport thinking that would be an easy way to relax, use the internet, and be right where I needed to be in the morning. When morning came around though, there was quite the commotion in the parking lot where I'd left the FJ... turns out tons of vehicles back there had their tires slashed! For some reason that I will never fully comprehend, nearly all the cars at the hotel had been vandalized except mine. I'd have thought that expensive-looking tires, huge canvas box on the roof, and gas cans would make me a vandalism gold mine, but thankfully not that night. Car next to mine...
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Highway, highway, highway… boooooring… Not much else to say. There was a ’scenic’ view sign off the highway pictured below. Maybe I’m just jaded after all that Utah/Yellowstone/etc. stuff…
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Unfortunately my pre-expedition adventure has come to an end. Leaving Yellowstone, I hopped on the interstate, set the cruise at 60 (mileage = yummy) and cruised towards Winnipeg. Along the way I made one last attempt at a cool blurry-water picture, but it also didn't turn out too well. Seems like you need to do it in fairly low light to have the exposure work with the slow shudder speed.
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I woke at the KOA, delightfully late, to the sounds of thousands of children drowning in the nearby pool. Upon inspection, it turned out to be only two who weren't drowning, but they fooled me all the same. A shower was great, and the facilities very nice. I was expecting the showers to be one of those "get naked with strange old men" rooms, but they had nice little stall things with changing rooms. Out of Mantua (which had some incredible ranch homes), is a forest road which leads to Inspiration Point - a 360 panorama from a summit. From the topo, it looked like there should be some dramatic views. The land in the area was beautiful, with fields of wildflowers and snow-capped peaks in the distance.
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The theme for the morning was bugs. BUGS… And after that there were some bugs, followed by BUGS. I broke down camp in a mad, ear- and mouth-full scramble and ran away without eating breakfast. That could wait… I’d never tried to use Delorme Topo for route finding, so I took a few minutes to plug in some stuff for Reds Canyon to see if I could navigate from the compy alone. That turned out to be a waste of time since there was the greatest and most complete signage I’ve ever seen throughout the whole area. Reds Canyon was rated a scenic of “10” in the Backcountry Adventures: Utah book. I don’t think a single trail in Arizona made that, only 9’s. So was Reds Canyon worth the hype? Yes.
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Unsure of what time it was, but assuming it to be about 5am, I awoke with the sunrise. The change in lighting offered a much better chance to take pictures of my campsite and I played with the camera a bit.
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I woke up at the Gillette ruins after a very good night’s sleep in the roof top tent. The temperatures at night were mild and the wind absent. Also camping were Lance (and Martin) and Tim who drove all the way up from Marana to take part in the previous night’s campfire.
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The last few days have been a mad rush to get everything in order for me to leave... less than a week from my scheduled departure date, and my tuck was falling apart with no roof top tent, no storage, fridge not wired or mounted, no HAM setup, tires out of balance and one flat, etc etc. Yikes! At Lance's we installed the tent and figured out a bunch of things. With the tent on and the time fast approaching midnight, it was time for a shakedown run - camping in the coves of Saguaro Lake!
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A group of AZFJ'ers met at homedad's shop in an attempt to rob local 4x4 shops of thousands of dollars in labor for installs. Of course it was a massive success! For my truck, we installed some OME 885 front springs with 1" spacers and repaired the damaged ball joint boot on my passenger side upper control arm. I wanted to reinstall my sway bar as well for the Continental Divide Expedition, but time was short and I was missing some of the hardware.
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JP from Expeditioneers happen to be in California near the location of the BajaRack facility and was nice enough to have my roof rack installed on his truck in order to bring it back to AZ and save us some shipping! So, in the evening I met him at his home for a quick install. Later that evening it was off to Gillette to enjoy the campfire with some AZFJ folks. We talked about the new rack some and decided that it must be put through the most grueling and shocking performance test imaginable.... would it survive?
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I met Jake and Becca and Dan (Sonic) for a fairly impromptu weekday night run of Chiva Falls in Tucson. Chiva is one of the best known trails near Tucson and features a very cool, large, and multifaceted obstacle called Three Feathers. On Three Feathers there are four main lines. Looking up at the obstacle from the bottom, there is the far left rocky crack thing, the easy bypass in the center-left, the huge depression thing in the center, and the chute on the right. The chute is dangerous because a slip of the tire would pretty well screw up your vehicle if you fell into the it... I've long talked about wanting to do the chute and the left side and this night was the perfect opportunity. So, as with any obstacle of this magnitude, we spent a lot of time looking at it and talking about the plan of attack before committing.
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Because he is a man-god, BellyDoc had Lance and I over to his home for him to work on our trucks. Not only does this save a ton of time and money, but his work is better and certainly more thoughtful than what we could get anywhere else.
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The night at Gillette was perfect. The temperatures were cool enough that sleeping was very comfortable just laying on top of the sleeping bag. Without its rainfly my tent is almost entirely mesh and that combined with the nearly no moon offered a pleasant, starry night sky. Not being eaten by coyotes was also nice. Backway to Crown King was the plan and the group looked to be a fun one; Wes and Angie, Wes's relatives in a rented Hummer H3, Dan and Jessa, Oren, and a few different crazy 'Truggy' machines. The start of the day was perfect with Oren nearly getting into a gunfight with some idiot in a really horrid 80's import tuner wanna-be crap bin. Of course saying they almost got in a gunfight is gross hyperbole, but it was pretty crazy nonetheless. Basically the guy was swerving around the road and dangerously cutting in front of vehicles, causing Oren to give him the finger... the response to which was a vulgar and quite hilarious confrontation. Once on the trail, we hit every single possible optional obstacle. I'd only ever done two, the most recognizable of them all, but the others afforded some great fun and challenges.
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Leaving school about noon, the first task for the day was to pick up my new ARB fridge from a house in Cave Creek. This was perfect, as just when I was about to leave I heard from 'Juan' BluePeace of an invitation for Guitar Hero and sandwiches. Since I can't pass up anything that involves Guitar Hero or sandwiches, I went by his house after picking up the fridge. There, of course, I was greeted by his meatball of a dog. We head out for Gillette and since BluePeace had not done so before, made our way to Table Mesa via the pipeline road from New River. We made radio contact with homedad and fredwood, who were on the highway headed for the Table Mesa exit and decided to meet at the white staircase obstacle on the pipeline road.
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I had to drive my girlfriend to the airport which left me on the south side of Tucson around lunchtime with no real schedule for the rest of the day... sounds like a perfect excuse to drive into the Santa Rita Mountains. I've been through Gunsight Pass a number of times, but mainly I wanted to rediscover a trail that I'd found a few months ago exploring the area near Sycamore Canyon. At that time I had no GPS on me, no maps, and no familiarity with the area. This time however, I was armed with GPS, topo maps, and aerial photography of the region. Woohoo! On the topo maps I found what I thought was the cool route I'd taken the other time and head in that direction. Gunsight Pass is the most popular route in the area and features the widest and smoothest trail. The area in Sycamore Canyon has tighter vegetation, is generally more narrow and a bit more rough though still nothing to worry about. There are a few things you have to slow down for, but nothing that could be considered crawling... |
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