I did say it would take awhile to get this all posted. Here's the next installment.
Day 2 - Kluskoil to the Indian Village
After the rain and storm of the night before, things quietened down for our first might of camping on the trail. The next morning we woke to drizzle and an assessment of damages from the previous day's rather rough start. We decided to get repairs done before breaking camp, which seemed to be the order of the day every morning afterwards.
I took a time out to fish off the dock early this morning, catching numerous squaw fish and throwing them back. Oliver thought this was great fun and really got into it.
Stuart had pranged a tree with the right front corner of his freshly restored 109, bending in the bumper about 6 inches and crushing some sheet metal against the tire. The wing had been pulled out on the trail the night before to allow him to continue, but now was a good time to bend it straight, with a little more finesse. Mark, Kris, Dave and Phil rolled up their sleeves. A suitable tree was found as an anchor point, and with careful positioning of a chain and gentle reversing, the dent was gone and the bumper straightened in no time. I was surprised at how accurate a job it was as you could hardly see where the damage had occurred.
Next on the list was Dave's roof rack on the Red Range Rover. I had loaned Dave and Peter an aluminum roof rack, sans mounting brackets to use for the trip. Dave had a set of mounting brackets and crossbars already, so mounted the rack on the crossbars. What we didn't know is that the cast upright supports on the crossbars were made of some kind of cheap cast pig iron and had decided to snap in half as soon as the trail got bumpy.
This caused the rack to drop down directly on the Range Rover's roof, and the remaining inch or two of upright to nicely leave some gouges whenever it bounced up and down. A trailside repair had been done the night before by inserting a small log, then tightening a strap over the back of the rack to keep it from bouncing. Now it was time to make the repair more permanent. Mark to the rescue... He brought out his chainsaw and sacrificed a small plywood tabletop to make two triangular brackets which held the cross bar of the roof rack and sat nicely in the rain groove of the Range Rover. A bit of strapping and reinforcing and all was in order.
We also were astounded at how much smoke Stuart's 109 was putting out. We knew the 2.5TD is more prone to smoke than a TDI, but he was fogging the whole place. A committee examination under the hood concluded that the air cleaner was not big enough to allow proper volume of air through and therefore a significant amount of unburned fuel was making its way into the exhaust. As we were about to close the hood, Mark also noticed something that was far more of a culprit -- that the plastic turbo hose had come off the intake manifold, thus rendering the turbo ineffective and allowing the engine to breath unfiltered air along the dusty trail. Having no recourse but to just plug it back in, we crossed our fingers that no permanent damage was done. This significantly reduced the smoke, but Stuart still has to work with Alan to increase the breathing on his engine.
Pamela, Oliver and I went for a morning stroll down to Chinee falls, where I was able to toss the line in a few times before it was time to leave.
At about noon we were all loaded up and ready to roll. The stretch from Kluskoil Lake to the park boundary seemed to go on forever. Much rougher and muddier than last time, but certainly the trail was passable.
As we were getting close to the Pan Meadows crossing, our first actual crossing of the Blackwater River, I got a call on the CB that my battery powered welder was required back down the trail. Somehow the viscous fan in Dave Tebbutt's Range Rover had decided to part company with its shaft and had ended up kissing the radiator, but, thank goodness, had not embraced it any further. During the process the threads on the end of the shaft had been buggered and now the nut -- not the original one -- would not stay on, which in turn allowed the fan to stray again at will. Mark and Peter put it all back together and were ready for a spot of welding by the time I got back down the trail to them. Mark got the honours and a few zaps later the fan will not come off the shaft -- ever.
The ladies along with us got a kick out of the road warrior style welding goggles and had to do a fashion show for the cameras with their rather unique fashion statement.
About an hour later, around 4 pm, we arrived at Pan Meadows Crossing with Phil and Bill already there ready to cross. Phil crossed with ease, defining the route for the others. When it was Bernie's turn he decided that it would be more fun to flood his engine in the middle, so he had to wait for Stuart to hand him off some WD40 before he could proceed. Of course Mark had to use the opportunity of a water crossing to pressure wash the undercarriage of his truck by crossing at as high a rate of speed as possible.
Once across it was discovered that Bernie had taking on water in his crankcase, so a quick side of the road oil change was undertaken. We were a fair ways down the trail by then, which is the byway between the old native village and the river crossing. This is the obvious route when heading westward, but I recall it being a major undertaking to locate the start of this trail last time heading eastward. A huge volume of trees had blocked the trail but had been cut away enough to allow ATVs to get through, so it was slow going, as we squeezed through narrow gaps and low overhangs. Phil was in the lead, and I was second. My roof rack made me at least 2 feet taller than Phil's Defender 90, so there were a number of slow downs to lift trees. We found out rather quickly that the chainsaw was back with Kris, who was back with Bernie doing the oil change. So our primary method of tree clearing was to lift them up or bend them back and drive on.
We came to one spot where there appeared to be three trees fallen, hanging at about the 8 foot level. Two were about 6 inches round and one was about 3 inches. I eased under them, just touching the gas cans on top, and Pamela got up on the hood to lift a wee bit to get us through. However, several things happened at once that brought us to a dead stop. I was easing forward with Pamela assessing from the top of the hood, when the 3 inch tree snapped. It had actually been holding up the other two trees which immediately came to rest on top of our truck. Pamela bounced forwards and landed butt first in the spare tire -- an embarrassing position that I was gracious enough not to photograph -- and the trees crushed one of the plastic jerry cans. It was full of fuel, but was crushed and twisted quite badly. It didn't leak, but I think it was a close thing. I am told these jerry cans are rated for dropping out of aircraft, and that actually may be true.
After some rather colourful conversation, it was concluded that we had to get a chainsaw to cut away the trees. I called on the CB to see if any of the trucks other than Kris had a chainsaw, and a few moments later Dave Tebbutt trotted up with what looked like a tobacco tin. Opening it up we saw a chain, but where was the rest of the saw? It didn't take long to figure out that we were the power behind the saw as there was a length of string and a small wooden handle attached to each end of the chain. Wrapping it around the tree trunk, and exerting a fair amount of energy Peter cut through the first tree and Phil and I shared the second tree.
We still had a number of miles to go and it was getting close to twilight. The forest along this trail was so tight that there was simply no place to stop and set up camp, so we kept plugging until we reached the abandoned native village at sunset. A quick wander around for those who hadn't seen it before. Certainly was creepier in the limited light than in daylight, but not the photo op it was last time since the light was waning.
We decided not to set up camp at the native village, as it was at the crossroads of several regularly used fuel routes and we figured we didn't want to have a confrontation with anyone about where we were camping. And, a few of us wondered about the ghosts floating around this creepy spot.
So, about a mile further down the trail we camped in a meadow on the side of the road. On the previous trip we had used this spot as a lunch spot. This day's drive seemed never to end and a few of us -- self included -- were a bit grumpy by the time we threw camp together. But a good night's sleep would fix that.
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