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Vancouver Island Cleanup TripAuthor: Larry Soo
Location: Southern Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada near Sooke
(see map)
Day 0: (Friday)It's funny how my long weekends always seem to keep me busier than when I'm at work. I spent my Friday off from work frantically trying to finish my bumper/tire carrier in time to catch the 9pm ferry to Vancouver Island. Sue and I were going to spend the weekend with Rob Bryce, John Barron, and the rest of the Island Rock Crawlers 4x4 club. This was a recently created club and one of their first official events was a clean-up of a local offroading area.I knew I wouldn't be able to complete my bumper; it still needed to be capped, the air fittings weren't installed, I needed to add bumper stops to tighten the spare tire, and the vertical posts prevented the license plate from folding down so I couldn't re-fuel my Jeep, and I still had to run CB wire to the new antenna mount. However, Rob had been telling me some hairy stories about the trails John had shown him so I knew I needed a tow strap attachment point at the back of my Jeep. The stock bumperettes just wouldn't do. At 7pm, the paint was still tacky as I bolted the bumper to my YJ and hurriedly packed my YJ (in under one hour...a new personal best!!). We arrived on the island around 11pm and dropped off our gear at Rob's house. Then we went to a local pub and met John and his girlfriend, Lori.
Day 1: (Saturday)Early the next morning, I removed my license plate and bungeed it to the spare tire. I also routed the CB antenna wire to the new mount on the tire rack. With those critical mods completed, we bought our camping food at Save-On and headed west towards Harbourview Road, which is the Shields Lake trailhead near Sooke, where we would meet up with the club. Arriving at the meeting place, I saw a motley collection of 4x4s which were obviously designed for running trails and not posing on the main drag. Vehicles like John's aluminum-bodied, ARB'd, dual-winch Land Cruiser and Wayne's bob-tailed, fully locked, 8274 Warn, dual xfer case Toyota long-box made it clear that these guys were walkin' the walk. As it turns out, they were also very serious about cleaning up the area to preserve the legal access to this tight, confusing network of twisting, climbing, rock-crawling trails.It didn't take long to notice that most of the garbage was left by people who didn't want to pay the fee to dump at a legitimate garbage disposal site. We came across discarded appliances, vehicles, tires, and worst of all, broken bags of _used_ diapers (Rob Bryce immediately made a bee-line for the nearest pressure wash station after dumping that load...heh heh, get it?). The juxtaposition of rotting building supplies alongside a patch of wild flowers in bloom served to underscore the fact that it takes a real ass to sully the forest. I was struck by the irony of me trying to cram the remains of an artificial Christmas tree into a garbage bag while surrounded by real trees.
Justin collecting garbage near some wild flowers (photo by John Barron)
We concentrated our efforts near the trailhead since that's where most of the garbage was dumped. After we cleaned up that area, we split into groups to clean up the major trails. John & Lori led me & Sue, Rob Bryce & Justin Heeley (aka "Pigpen"), and Brad Peden (Toyota shortbox, f/r Lockrights) up the Mossy trail.
This started out as a moderately difficult trail, which is why we
were surprised to see that some dickhead went through the trouble
to drive up here just to dump a dozen garbage bags of loaded
diapers! After loading them into Rob's truck, we continued on
until we reached a seriously off-camber uphill section. The
camber was caused by a deep erosion running diagonally across the
trail. You had to stay hard left and leaned way over before
finally making a hard right to drop into the erosion ditch in
order to avoid flopping over sideways. I got out and checked the
section on foot while Justin offered some excellent pointers for
wheel placement. John, ever the compassionate man, started
honking his horn at me (they let me go in the lead)
From there it was on to "Cleavage Rock." As the name suggests,
it's a deeply vee'd rock formation which forces you to carefully
straddle the center section. The walls were the steepest I'd
seen (in person) on any vee obstacle. With Sue positioned to
capture this Kodak moment, I drove through without any problems
except that I scraped my front shackle on a rock near the exit.
Rob's Comanche slipped sideways during his attempt and I thought
for sure he was going to take body damage. But as usual, he
squeaked that longbox through without hitting anything except his
tube bumper which was designed for taking that abuse. John was
"spotted" right into the rock which I just scraped and Brad who
had just caught up to us (he left town late) walked through like
nothing happened.
The rest of the route consisted of a fairly steep, twisting climb
which afforded us a great view of the bay. Lori acted as the
flora guide by speaking in terms one should expect from a
biologist, "the trees are receptive." Huh? "Sexy." Huh? "You
know, horny?" Oh!!
Once we reached the trail's summit, we stopped for lunch. We
were a ten minute hike away from the abandoned fire lookout above
us but were too tired (ie: fat ass lazy) to explore. Tales of
Justin's FrankenCruiser [tm] were bandied about. Apparently, he
has the most hideous Land Cruiser in all creation. Justin was
also quite a wise guy and was continually cracking jokes. If it
was anyone else I would have found it annoying but he was truly
funny.
We collected some more garbage on the way down to the rendezvous
point. John & Lori took off ahead of us in order to meet with
the Times-Colonist reporter who had just arrived to photograph
the clean-up. (Boy, this club is media-wise, too!) Vern and
Mike had an impressive load of garbage piled into the beater
trailer pulled behind Vern's CJ5. Some of the members reported
that two vehicles loaded with garbage and headed into the area
turned around at the trailhead when they saw some clubbers
unloading the stuff they just removed from the trails.
After a group photo, we drove en masse to the local recycler, Ken
at Sooke Disposal & Recycling, who allowed us to dump the garbage
for free. Most of the club then left to attend other commitments
while some of us went back into the bush to do some 'wheeling.
Rob, Sue and I were going to camp at Shields Lake so we headed up
that way. At one point, I passed by John who, I thought, had
stopped to pick up some pieces of a leaf spring which he found on
the trail. A minute later one of the other guys radio'd that the
parts belonged to his BJ42.
Apparently, he had only 1 complete spring left on his rear
driver's side pack. Without missing a beat, he started the task
of disassembling the pack so he could arrange the remaining
spring portions in a staggered formation so they could support
the one remaining complete leaf spring for the drive home.
Justin, John & Wayne had performed just such a field fix recently
on FrankenCruiser [tm] so they were confident it would work. In
fact, Justin thought his fix worked so well that he drove around
for 5 days on a spring pack which had not a single complete leaf.
The more I heard about his exploits, the stronger my perverted
desire to see his FrankenCruiser [tm] became (it was suffering
with a bad case of cracked-block-itis so Justin was riding
shotgun for a while).
While we were waiting for John to complete his repair, Ian
Archibald took Sue and I for a ride in his recently re-finished
'78 FJ40. The body on his LC looked brand new, having been
recently patched up by what must be an excellent body shop.
The route was essentially the same set of trails which John had
introduced Rob to a few weeks ago. The first interesting bit was
at the trail head, which was essentially a narrow, rock-strewn
creek bed heading up into the bush.
The rocks started getting
pretty big and culminated in a tricky right-hand curve decorated
with a sharp rock formation on the inside edge. To make things
more interesting was the outside edge of the trail which sloped
towards the right. The further you got through the turn, the
more your vehicle would tip to the right and come up against the
naturally-occuring can opener. Throw in some run off water and
loose rocks and you have yourself some careful thinking ahead of
you. And we spent no small amount of time figuring out the best
approach for our two, very different, vehicles. I was able to
squeeze my YJ through without getting too hairy on the angle.
Because he had a significantly longer truck, Rob didn't have a
choice in the matter and had to cut high and angular to avoid
trashing his body panels. The off-camber section the day before
had prepared us for steep lean angles so it wasn't as
bladder-loosening as it could have been. It was close but we got
the Comanche through with only a little bit of scratched paint at
the rear. Rob continues to impress me with the things he can do
with that innocent-looking Comanche.
After that obstacle, the trail improved noticably and it was an
easy drive to Tugwell Lake. At the lake we were greeted by the
sight of beer cans, bottles, used shotgun shells, and other
garbage both around and in the lake. It was the kind of thing
that just makes you shake your head. Fortunately, it looks like
the lake could be cleaned up by a small club spending only half a
day of easy work. Once cleaned up, I think it would an excellent
place to camp. The water was clear and shallow so it would
probably get quite warm in the summer. There were also lots of
rock formations surrounding the lake which would be excellent for
sunning or just enjoying the view. We had lunch here and soaked
up some of the sunshine which had been quite rare this month.
The route back down from Tugwell Lake was quite easy until we
reached "Devil's Drop". To visualize it, simply imagine a
downward-sloping bridge crossing a small stream with steep banks
on both sides. The bank under our side of the bridge was the
steepest, heading downwards at around 40 degrees before a
vertical drop of about 2 feet at the bottom.
Now imagine that the bridge isn't there and you have to drive
over that drop-off and hope that you don't slip sideways as your
front wheels drop down that last two feet with the rest of your
vehicle at a hairy downward, slightly off-camber angle. Oh, and
on your way down that steep slope is a large rock on the left
side which you have to drive over and the bank is composed not of
slick rock but loose dirt and rocks.
Some time between walking back to his truck and bringing it near
the edge of the bank, Rob must've struck a rich vein of
testosterone because he calmly informed me that he'd give it a
shot after all. So, with cameras readied and Rob with a
death-grip on the steering wheel, he drove off the top and...did
a remarkably controlled descent! Well, I wasn't about to let a
flatlander prairie boy in a long box Comanche out-do me! NO sir!
So I clambered up the bank towards my Jeep, all the while hoping
I wouldn't chicken out. My Jeep has _always_ had crappy brakes
and the fact that it also had an automatic tranny was not a
comforting thought at this particular point in time. Basically,
I was at the mercy of my mediocre brakes. At the crest of the
bank, I locked-in the parking brake to take up any slack in the
rear brake cylinders and inched/slid my way down the bank, all
the while accompanied by loud, groaning protests from my brakes.
It was scary going over the top but once I got past the point
where I knew the Jeep wouldn't slip side ways and flip over, I
recovered enough sense to think, "gee, I hope Sue's getting a
good picture of this!" Priorities, right?
As much fun as it was, Rob made me feel nervous when he mentioned
that the next obstacle, an unnamed drop-and-climb creek crossing,
was even STEEPER. So we continued on toward our sorry fate. We
switchbacked our way down the mountainside on a narrow, rocky
road and enjoyed the intermittent views of the valley below us.
And all too soon, we were There.
It was particularly dramatic
because it was framed by a large, semi-destroyed log bridge
sitting 15 feet above the stream which it crossed. And as
always, Rob was perfectly truthful when he said it was steeper.
With the rocks out of the way, I was able to get my Jeep into the
stream and hopefully launch myself up the other bank. Well,
"launch" wasn't a very accurate term. My rear bumper got hung-up
on a rock and I didn't have enough traction. So we ended up
wrapping the strap around a portion of the old log bridge and
winched up towards it. The log started shaking quite a bit but
the re-inforcing logs prevented it from toppling onto my Jeep
(otherwise you wouldn't be reading this trip report!).
The only damage he suffered
was a bent rear bumper tube. But since everything on his truck was
working class rather than pavement queen, he just bashed it back into
shape (kinda) with the flat side of his maul.
...lars
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