Don't worry, I won't get my feelings hurt if you skip the below novel and just go straight to the pictures. LOL!!

Another weekend has passed and another snow wheeling trip in the books. This one though is my favorite trip so far this year! Two weekends ago we run FS75 road and didnt quite make it to Lonesome Lake. Well Saturday we decided it was make or break or run out of gas. Which ever happened first. LOL! With the recent major snow fall around here we knew conditions would be different then the last trip and it didn't disappoint. We started on trail at about 11:00, before we even got to mile marker 1 the snow was accumulating fast and right about mile 1 we ran into a group that was already breaking trail. We talked with them for a second and convinced them to let us by at the next wide spot. Once getting by them it was sheer mayhem. The recent snow fall put about 12"-20" of fresh snow in old tracks so breaking trail at 10-15mph was a blast. We rotated vehicles back and forth for the next 5-6 miles so everyone got a chance to play in the fresh stuff, sometimes running side by side for a while. Coming down the backside of Hollar Pass there was a large snow drift that took a while to find the right line. Jonathon in his Toyota took the first crack at it and had a nice pucker moment as he found a large hole. We eventually shovel'd a snow line to anchor the tires in and crawled through the drift. Once navigating that drift we kept on. We stopped at the FS73 turn off for lunch and the snow was getting deeper, speeds slowed to 1-5mph and the lighter rigs starting working their way to the front. We still had plenty of opportunity for 3 wide trail breaking races though. LOL. This went on for quite a while until we reached the narrow parts of 7530. I was in front making new tracks along some pretty sketchy snow drifts that put you side hilling along some long cliffs. Pretty butt puckering! We finally got to where we made it to two weekends ago and the going really slowed. Nobody had gone past our tracks so it was pure, fresh snow and it took work. We started rotatating vehicles again because the snow wasn't dense enough to pack and crawl so it was a whole bunch of full throttle bashing the snow bank and reverse, back and forth, I'd go till my trans got warm then I'd rotate to the next guy until they got tired and repeat. finally at about 6:30 we made it to the lake. At the lake the snow was at least 6' deep. We were sinking down about the height of our tires (37") and pushing a lot of snow with the bumper and grills. It was so awesome. The last 100 yards I had snow coming over my hood as I pushed to the lake. So much fun!!! I know, a really long read, but it was so much fun!!!

 

That was a great freaking run!

 

Haha. The whip!

 

Fun! Sounds like a good trip.

Hey just out of curiosity, what psi are you guys running in that deep powder?

 

Myself and Ronin were both about 1.5-2 psi. The Toyota and Tracker don't have beadlocks but are pretty light so there were running 3-4 psi. The 4 doors without beadlocks were all about 5 psi.

Once we reached the top all the non beadlock rigs aired up to 6-8 psi for the ride back down since the snow was more packed now that 7 rigs had paved a road.

 

We've been out, off and on, on the east side of the Cascades as well. Photos all in Chelan & Douglas counties, Washington:















Traveling in winter... It's interesting!

Guy

 

Awesome pictures Guy. Do you have any good places that you'd share in your area? My sister lives in Malaga and I'd love to go stay with her for a few days and do some exploring.

 

We were back in the snow last weekend. This time we went east of the mountains just outside of Ellensburg. The snow conditions were substantially different then what we've experienced so far this year, heavy and wet. No amount of momentum was good. It was all about slow crawling and low air pressures. The weather was interesting. Really nice when we started, clear and not too bad, it started to snow a couple hours in then turned to fog by noon and stayed that way. Going back down was challenging as it was a white out and we could barely find our tracks going up. Good times!
The lower road twists through the pine trees and works its way up. This is the first time we got see how open it was up on the top.





We called the Ranger district to make sure the area was open to wheeled vehicles. He said it was but laughed at the thought of us trying to drive Jeeps up there. He says, "stay on the road." What road?



The snow is getting very challenging.

Visibility is going away.



We did a lot of this.

A little of this.

The biggest possible footprint I could make. 0 psi in the front 1.5 psi in the rear. Thanks TrailReady and Goodyear for making an awesome combination!



This is my favorite picture from the trip. My friend Mike took it. This is just before we decided to call it a day. It was so hard to make forward progress at this point. We were in the middle of this giant field with a gradual uphill. It was all I could do to crawl ever so slowly forward. Mikes son was walking next to me "coaching" me along. Telling me to slow down/back up/go faster/etc. Not helpful at all, but he felt good and I enjoyed the company. LOL! You can see in the picture how dense the fog was. We were litterally driving blind.

Another awesome trip. We're going to give it a couple weeks and head back up there to see if the snow improves. The summit is 5400 feet and we made it to 4920.

 

Really like that XJ.

 

Awesome run!!! Great trip report as usual.