This run developed because Mike Eagan wanted to go
somewhere, anywhere, to check out his
rig (modifications you know) and since I
had nothing planned, I suggested Tamarack Lake. We
decided to trailer our rigs up to Ramshorn Road on
Saturday (Sept 30) and go on up to Tamarack
Lake in our Jeeps, (well, 1 Jeep and
1 Bronco) where we would do some exploring.
Mike made a few calls to members who might be interested,
knowing that quite a few had run the
Rubicon the weekend before and would
probably be repairing their vehicles (Rocky, Jim F.) Carl said
he would go and thought there were a few others who
might be interested. We decided to
meet at
the Pantry in Arcata at 9AM for those that wanted to go.
Saturday morning Mike and I showed up, but no one else was
there. We made a call to Carl and
he
was having trouble with his Jeep. He
had called my house and Mike’s house, but we had already left.
Mike and I were in no hurry, so we had a leisurely breakfast and departed
for Tamarack about 10 AM.
We made it to Ramshorn Road with no problems, with Mike
idling along behind me with his
big Ford Power stroke Diesel, watching my Dodge
Dakota struggling with every hill! (Probably
due
to the heavy Winch I have on the front!)
After finding a place to leave our pick-ups and trailers,
we headed for
the mountains, arriving at Tamarack Lake about 3 or 4 PM.
After setting up camp overlooking the lake, we proceeded to explore a few
roads above our camp.
We got back
in time to cook dinner and watch a few jet contrails as the sun was setting
in
the west (where it always does).
Sunday morning we had breakfast and broke camp, as we
didn’t know exactly where we would
end up (maybe on Interstate 5!)
We headed up the rocky road out of camp to the top of the
ridge, and then
started down in the canyon toward I-5. This
would be what you would call
“a trail less traveled.” There were some faint tracks made earlier in the year, our kind of trail!
After miles of rocks, brush and in general, good 4-wheeling,
we came to a sign that said
“No outlet, road closed 9 miles ahead, gated”.
We estimated that was around Interstate 5.
We went on for another mile or so and decided to backtrack to where we
had seen an even
fainter trail headed up another ridge to the north.
We started up the faint trail, not entirely sure if it was
a road (it was). Now this trail was
what we had came for, there were washouts, heavy brush, off camber spots, long
rocky sections
and every other thing you look for in a good? trail.
We could see it was headed up the ridge,
but we never knew when it might
come to an end. By now there were
only 4-wheeler (quad) tracks.
I
knew there was another trail at the top of the ridge because I had been there,
but we didn’t know
if we would get stopped before we got there.
We kept working our way up until seemingly,
out of nowhere, we hit the
upper trail directly below the sluice, which is well documented by
some of our
members in video tapes of previous runs. We
run the sluice, which isn’t that tough,
but it is wet and rocky, which can
make it interesting.
This
is the faint trail
The trail is the right side of the photo
Mike coming out of the sluice
After the sluice, we started back the ridge trail, making a
side run up a steep rocky
climb to a summit, where we took a lunch break.
From this point, we could see every
place we had been that morning,
including the canyon we had crawled out of. After our
break, we headed back down
the trail, where we hooked back up with the Tamarack Lake trail.
I would like to point out that we didn’t see or meet any
type of vehicle all morning and
it appears that only quads are using the ridge
trail. I would hope that we could
plan another
club run up there next year. There
are trails for every type of rig. The Lake and surrounding
area are beautiful,
even if you just go to camp!
Note: The ridge in the middle
of the photo on the right is where we encountered the "Gate" sign!
We got back to our pick-ups, loaded our rigs and headed
home in 85-degree weather, stopping at
the Pacific Brewery in Weaverville for
dinner. The trip home was
uneventful, with Mike flying
over all the hills and waiting on the other side
for me to catch up. We did stop at
the scales
above Blue Lake and weigh our loaded trailers.
Mikes Bronco and trailer outweigh my Jeep and
Trailer, 4800 to 4500
pounds.
I really enjoyed this trip, with great weather, great
camping, great wheeling and great company!
Thanks to Mike, who talked me into going!
Jim Boyett
Below are a few
thumbnails of the trip
The Photos
below of the Tamarack Lake area were sent to me by Miklos Kovacs
