Tuesday afternoon, Mar 8th, I had about 4 hours free time before sunset, so I took the opportunity to head for a local logging road to try out my new tires. The Lost Creek/Davis Lake FSR is about 30 min. from my home via Hwy 11 and Hwy 7, then 10 km N on Sylvester Rd., a nice curvy 2 lane asphalt along the base of the mountains. Once at the FSR, you're immediately on hard packed gravel, with lots of washboard and puddles, due to our very wet weather the last few months. At the 10 km mark, the road is not in a current logging area, so not maintained at all, and becomes much rougher, with washouts and brush grown in to narrow the track to just barely one lane. I drove another 15 km, to the point where a creek had cut through the trail to a depth of about 6 ft, with vertical banks, before turning around for the trip back out. The entire trip was done in 2 wheel drive, except for 1 deep creek washout that required a right angle turn in the middle to climb out the far side, where I lost traction at low speed. On the return run through here I was able to get across in 2wd, by going just a little bit faster
It felt great to get out there, after weeks of rain, and get some fresh forest air and mountain scenery. I was the only vehicle on the trail, until I got back to the better section of the road at km 10, where I came across a '90s Jeep Cherokee, stopped with the hood up, and 2 young guys trying to get it to fire up, with no success. It had stalled out while bouncing along on the washboard, and they couldn't find the cause. I offered a ride back to pavement, where 1 of them could make a call when cel reception could be reached. The owner accepted the offer, and was able to call a buddy with a tow truck to come out and rescue the Jeep. I then ran him back to the truck to wait for the tow, and once again turned around for home. The young Jeep driver was quite impressed with the ride and power of my TB EXT on te rough road, as well as the fact that it didn't stall out like his had, of course.
I may have won over a GMT 360/370 convert, as well as an offer to buy me dinner this weekend. All in all, an interesting little trail run.
