sept long weekend on Old Conklin Wagon Road

[binch]

Anyone interested in going up to Lac La Biche area (old Conklin wagon road north of Lac La Biche) for the Sept Long weekend?????

We can see if there are as many Saskatoon berries and Blue berries as last year.   I was thinking of taking my canoe this time around as there are so many water bodies up there.

Who game????

cheers, Bill

[headdamage]

Interested but it is a bit far north for me right now. Anything going west to the mountains?

[binch]

Interested but it is a bit far north for me right now. Anything going west to the mountains?

Not from me right now....Still looking northeast.

[DBrands]

Interested.

[bumpydormobile]

Hi Bill
What kind of a road are we talking about here? Goat path or gravel road.  All day or over night?

David

[DBrands]

The top end of the road looks fairly well used (we turned off the main road last year to head down a less used trail). If we want to explore, the south end appears to have been abandoned for the most part and is probably impassable as it uses the river/creek/swamp in some places.

It's the good part of 3 hrs to get up there, so likely a weekend trip.

We did the red, purple and blue tracks last year. The Magenta is likely a well used forest service road the entire length. The black track is what I think is the remainder of the old winter road that looks unmaintained (the bottom section that doesn't overlap with the magenta).

[binch]

If I'm not mistaken the magenta is the old conklin wagon trail, or what it used to be kinda.   It ends up in Conklin corner.    Majority of the magenta road is sand gravel and pretty good.   The top section (last 30km) is unkept road and tends to be a bit wet and very rutted.   It was a lot of fun the first trip up.   

We found a trapper track heading west off the Conklin road and it took us to Hwy 63.   There was on rickety bridge and another stream crossing on that....A bit of work but we made it out.     I was toying with the idea of trying the crossing at the east end of Steepbank Lake, and heading across the north edge of the sand pit (see google maps https://www.google.com/maps/place/Conklin,+AB/@55.485739,-111.5453563,4836m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x53a599e982c91eb1:0x4f18ea9562e0c452!8m2!3d55.631388!4d-111.083884).   There is a water crossing there but I'm not sure how doable it will be this year with all the precipitation we're getting this year. 

It's tarmac up to the area, sand/gravel haul road (good when dry) travelling north of Lac La Biche and the trails are just about everything but rock.   But we can play it by ear.     Unfortunately I won't be able to leave until Saturday morning about 10ish but we would be coming back monday morning.

[binch]

Sorry folks.....going to have to postpone until Oct long weekend.  Hope you can make it then ;-)