Alexander Mackenzie Trail Trip for 2015

[B-Red]

I was reviewing the fire situation in the area of travel. There is currently a forest fire at Puntzi lake. It is 67% contained as of today. its closer to HWY 20 east of Anahime. Smoke however is spreading around.

Fire ban is in effect through out the region.  Forest use is unrestricted.

Will keep monitoring as we get closer.

cheers,

[binch]

Foods all ready to go.  Picking up the 110 tonite and we start sorting gear tomorrow for load on Friday.    GAME ON!!!!

[B-Red]

Tonight I added the most important feature for the trip: a GoPro LCD screen. It mounts on the back of the Camera and I can check what am taping. Plus I bought a long pole for it.
Ready to capture some magic moments

[binch]

I had a bit of a panic moment with one of the new oil cooler lines not sealing, and leaving oil everywhere.   Reinstalled original line and it's sealing just fine.    Many thanks to Bert for getting that sorted on such short notice.    Got the tires switched across and tomorrow we start loading up the beast of burden.   On the menu will be French toast, eggs, pancakes, steaks, pork chops, wild meat stroganoff, fish chowder, eton mess, chocolate zucchini loaf, banana break, etc.    Going to be a good trip provided the chuck wagon makes it! ;)

[binch]

Damned the torpedos!!!   We're off..... ;)

[Mark]

Good luck and have fun! Take lots of pics!!!!!

[Red90]

An update on progress from their daily location pings...

They left Quesnel Monday morning hitting the start of the off road portion of the trail and the first river crossing at 2:30.  Camp for the first night at the West Road River campsite at the eastern end of Kluskoil lakes.

Tuesday ended at the lower Kluskus Lakes.

At lunch today (Wednesday) they have made it past the Kluskus Reserve at the east end of the western most Kluskus lake.

[Matt H]

I would really like to do this one day.

[Red90]

Looks like Wednesday and Thursday nights were spent at the abandoned fishing camp on Tsacha Lakes.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/53%C2%B001'42.9%22N+124%C2%B050'23.3%22W/@53.0286973,-124.8385692,1194m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0?hl=en

[Red90]

Looks like they have made it to the end of the trail at Gatcho Lake today.  Three long days of slogging through the tough western half of the trail.

[Gardenome]

Can't wait to see the photos and the videos. And hear the stories.


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[B-Red]

Well folks. The trip is going fantastic. Leaving Bella Coola today for the trip home. Will put more info when when back home.

AMT ... Reliving some of the Camel Trophy Experience..

[Mark]

If there was a "waiting on the edge of my seat" emoticon, I would insert it here!

[Trevor]

Made it back home this afternoon. The trip was a combination of a lot of things...extremely fun, great comradre with our small group, some pretty epic country to drive through, and a ton more work than any of us expected.

We had only one minor repair over the first day. Dave spun a half shaft and had a well worn axle shaft to go along with it, so those were swapped out.

Following that we started to run into issues with tires. Emad, Jeffrey and Criag (driving Bill's truck) each took out the sidewalls on a tire. Emad also had a tube failure in another tires which forced us to use Dave's spare on his vehicle. At the same time Emad developed a slow leak in a third tire. That left me as the only one with spares (two 33" BFG KM2's). We spent a lot of time clearing puch thus far and the obstacles were taking their toll on the tires.

On route to the Home Ranch we stopped at Pan Phillip's son's ranch and found out that the Home ranch was now off limits due to the owner of the land no longer allowing people to camp there. This was a bit upsetting as we had really hoped to spend a night there. We continued on the northinerly route instead and made it to Lamberts farm, and camped just past there on the Blackwater River. Pretty epic trout stream that one.

This was also decision time as we had no spares left other than mine, which could not be used individually on any of the vehicles but mine. If we couldn't fix the tires we would be calling the trip as we couldn't continue safely with so few spares. Dave and I tackled the tire repairs and were able to plug the side wall tears in both Jeffrey's and Bill's tires to the point they would hold air. Dave and Emad were also able to re-tube one of his tires (the other was complete destroyed and not repairable). This put us back to 3 "ok" spares, and then my two which could be swapped out with the rear set of any of the other vehicles to bring another 2 tires into the rotation, if needed.

So we were back in action andready for the last portion of the trail...

...which was complete hell.

As we left Lambert's things started well as the trail was cleared to the fork to basalt indian reserve. Past that though, the trail likely had not seen any traffic since Dave Blair was on it in 2013. It was heavily overgrown and the deadfall was insane. Our pace ground to a crawl as we would send a team ahead to clear bush as 3-4 people stayed back to leapfrog the vehicles forward. We slogged on like this for most of the day. It got really interesting once night fell as we still have a long way to go to our campsite. ?We slogged on with flashlights and headlights providing the lighting for the saw operators.

We hit camp that night around 11 PM, and it was a truly beautiful sight to see (although its actually a pretty borderling camp) as it was the first clearing we had seen since lunch earlier that day. We were all surprisingly upbeat, eventhough we were completely spent. We worked well as a team and pushed through, and that kept the spiritis up. But that was just a glimpse of what lay ahead...

We new for the last leg of the trail the bush was going to be extreme. The trail was known to get increasingly overgrown, and also contain much more mud. So we would have more sawing than the prior day and we also expected a lot of winching. We started on the trail started around 9:30 and immediatley the saw was running. It was a crawl out of the gate, and didn't get any better. As the day progressed we fell farther and farther behind, it was just one pile of deadfall after another.

The overgrown portion began about 5 miles earlier than was noted on the last expedition, and we hit that area just as the sun was getting low in the western sky. And since we were heading west, we were driving right into it. I can't explain the afffect that the sun has when it is sitting directly in your view like that, and you are also looking through a wall fo alder. TYou simply cannot see anything in front of you. It is completely blinding. Bill was leading and literally inching his bvehicle ahead. Even with 3 people out front of him a large logsticking out from the left was not seen due to this poor lighting, and he ran his left headlight assembly right into it.

From that point froward the lead vehicle had to be walked ahead with a guide, and the rest of the vehicle driven bumper to bumper behind in order to maintain the track. You could rarely see the vehicle ahead of you, msotly you were driving on faith and a guesstimate of where his line was. Once the sun set it didn't get any better. Since we needed 5 people driving this left only 4 to clear trail ahead, further slowing the pace. We moved in lurches, and rotated out saw duties as people became too fatigued.

It was a back breaking amount of work and sapped the life from everyone. By midnight we still had a long way to go. But worse, we knew we had the massive slew ahead and expected several hours there along just to get the vehicles through. That was kicking morale pretty hard. But we did get a break, as that big slew was gone. I guess things have been dry enough for long enough that what was left was just a small boggu area that Bill's vehicle got stuck in simply due to sorting out what line we needed. Once we got him winched out, and saw the proper line, we all drove through without issue. That gave us the energy to make the final push.

A couple hours more of clearing bush, and we ended up at our final lake camp around 2:00 AM. Completely knackered.

That last coupl,e days worth of trail was tricky largely due to the fact that there just isn't anywhere to camp along the way. If the trail hadn't been so overgrown we would have had no issues. But with all the clearing requried, it meant that we simply couldn't make ant time getting from one camp to the next.

Overall it was a very enjoyable experience. We cleared a ton of bush through the trip, but the last 3 days of trail just increased in intensity, ending in some real ass-kickers to be sure. But at the end of days like that you do feel a sense of accomplishment. Cap that off with having a small, very enjoyable, and very committed group around you and one ends up with a great experience.

I wouldn't do it again tomorrow (because I'm too sore), but I would definitely do it again.

I took a few pics that I will try to get posted tonight or tomorrow. Lloyd was a main photographer though, and he has a ton of them. He's going to post them to flicker and we can link from there.

[Gardenome]

I hear a group just went through and did a bunch of clearing..... Oh, wait. Never mind. 


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