Mackenzie Trail 2005 - Part 6

Day 6 - The Longest Day
Another bright morning, albeit somewhat white due to a heavy frost and a bit of fog around the fringes. It didn't take long for the sun to clear the frost away. The surrounding several hundred acres of hay fields cleared of fog quickly as well, revealing one of the few wildlife spottings of the trip. A bull moose was lurking at the edge of one of the fields, about 400 yards away. Over the course of the trip we were constantly amazed to see the lack of wild animals. It's hard to say for sure whether it was the time of year or the dead pines or what, but compared to the earlier trip we took, there was a distinct lack of wildlife along the route.
Our goal today was to get as far as we could westward, with no exact destination in mind. The previous trip, it had taken us 2 days to get in to this point, so we anticipated another 2 days to get out to Gatcho Lake, the unofficial end of the trail as at this point the trail proceeds into Tweedsmuir Park and is inaccessible to vehicles. From Gatcho, our recollection is a southward run of about 70 KM down to Anahim Lake and the (gravel) highway.
We had a rather leisurely breakfast and decided we'd also make a "real" lunch stop around 1 PM or whenever we found a suitable spot. No rush for today. As we proceeded away from the civilization provided by the ranchlands, we came across a few horses, which may have been wild at some point, but were now stabled in an old barn — obviously one of the local ranchers was trying to put them to use. We then came across a trappers cabin, same one we had inspected in our previous trip, and had to stop and check out. It was eerie as nothing had changed in the past 3 years. The door was still open, the breakfast table looked like they had just eaten and not wiped up yet, in fact it looked like they had just gone out to the barn and would be back anytime. Just a bit thicker of dust layer, and a couple of notes from various visitors, but this abandoned place was pretty weird. Following that, the trees started thickening up and we continued along the wagon trail westward. We passed several lakes and the spot at the east end of Eliguk lake which we had camped in the previous trip, last time with a huge rainstorm soaking down all the gear. We thought we were making pretty good progress, as we were barely at noon and yet had done close to a full day's travel compared to the previous trip. All the regular hurdles of continuous mud, side slopes, rocky road and bugs we took in stride. We're getting pretty used to the routine now.
Then things changed. There is a spot where the wagon trail comes down one side of a small gully, then turns sharply northward and over a hillock, about 100 feet high, then down the other side and through a side slope of about 200 feet, followed by a rather deep and twisty — but short — mud hole. This brought us to a stop as every truck had to winch up the first slope, and carefully maneuver along the side slope, thus resulting in not having any momentum for the muck. Stuart's 109, like all the others, winched up the first challenge, but due to several trucks going before and making the side slope a bit slick, he slipped off the edge and into a 2 foot deep muddy marsh. Still on the side slope, and in danger of rolling over on the drivers side, Bill and Bernie rushed over planted themselves on the right front wing and remained there to counterbalance the angle while Mark, Phil and I hooked up winches and did a rather long drag to dislodge Stuart from the muck. It gave us memories of the previous trip as both Mark and Kris got stuck in exactly the same spot going the other direction. It's just a bit deeper now...
Of course, due to my 4wd not operating, I drove as far as I could, then was winched the balance of the way.
So much for a nice lunch break. We were covered with mud now, and it was about 3 PM. The forest now thickened to a point where there really was no place to pull off, anyway. We simply had to push on through in hopes of finding a clearing and a place to pitch camp for the night. Shortly after — which interprets to mean several kilometers of mud, rocks and side slopes — we came to the east end of the huge meadows. Last trip we had crossed these meadows along a trail which ran along the southern edge through about 8 KM of continuous smooth meadow. Now Mark, on the first 100 feet of this same trail, broke through and got stuck axle deep in muck. Bernie followed suit, then we all stopped and noticed that even standing on the ground in our boots we were sinking through the sod and developing a sticky growing mud base on our boots. OK, time to extract and find another route. All truck moved back, and Phil, Kris and Bill used their rigs to tug out Bernie and Mark. Its now 6 PM, and we can't camp here because the ground is so wet and there is no place to set up tents.
While the rigs were being extracted, several (bored) women decided to take a walk so they and the dogs went off exploring. In doing so, they stumbled across another higher road in the bushes to the north side of where we were by about 100 yards, and a very overgrown trail joining the two. Some GPSing revealed that this was the George Krestinuk wagon trail, pushed through in the 1920's, but it hadn't been used for years, obvious because of the overgrowth and fallen trees. However, according to the maps we had, this trail proceeded a few kilometers northwest, then turned southward to our eventual destination, Gatcho Lake. So we had our new route, and we'll just find a camping spot along the way. It's obvious we had to avoid the meadows road as the water table is now so high that it is almost swamp again, not the drained meadow it once was.
With Mark in front on trail-breaking duty, chainsaw at ready and used constantly, we started down the Krestinuk wagon trail. The going was slow as the trees became thicker and thicker. It was almost as if you couldn't see off to the left and right because the trees were so thick. Many places the trees were dead, but during the course of their life had grown from sapling when the trail was originally blazed, to thicknesses of 1-2 feet. The trail was narrow enough when it was first pushed through for wagons, but the growth of the trees had narrowed it even further. Every one of us was side scraping unavoidably over and over again as we progressed. Not only did eveyone's mirrors get folded in, but most of us lost a lense or two as the folded mirrors got crushed againts the body. I also pushed in both fresh air vents on my lower doors as we squeezed through the old dead trees. This went on for about 3 hours, at a speed of about 1 km per hour. Adding to this was every few hundred feet the trail would dip down into a soft spot as it went close to the meadows and we would have to extract ourselves from the mud. It was getting dark now, around 9 PM, no place to camp, no place to turn around, we hadn't had our restful lunch and we were all tired and getting a bit cranky. Accourding to the GPS, we were about 3 km from Gatcho Lake. We decided to push through as we recalled there was a reasonable camping area there.
But, what was a tough grunt of a day got worse. At one point the wagon trail crosses very close to the meadow for about 300 yards and it was nothing but a mud bog. Mark had got himself in, and with high beams could see the other edge, about 100 yards away. We knew if Mark was stuck, we'd all be stuck behind him, so it was time to formulate a plan. It's dark, raining now, the only way to get from one vehicle to another is walking through 18" deep ruts filled with water, or slip-sliding on the broken up middle hump. We're tired from continuous winching, and did I mention hungry? Most of us had resolved to opening our coolers and eating along the way — obviously we weren't gonna get lunch now. That was one of the few comic reliefs we had that night.
It was concluded that the best course of action was to link all our trucks together via our winch cables, and winch one forward while the others freewheeled out their line. That way, we only had to march through the hundred feet or so of muck one time each rather than every move forward. Mark at the front was using trees, stumps and whatever he could grasp for anchors, and the rest of us winched from truck to truck. In the process of pulling my line out and dragging it to Phil's truck I got a boot stuck in the muck and came up with a socked foot, slipped and fell, dipping myself from the chest down in the goo. I was able to get my boot back, but it was full of mud when I slipped it back on. Just something to add to the ambience of the evening.
Each winch forward gained us about 60 feet, then we stopped and acted as an anchor for the truck behind us. Once all trucks were moved forward, the back truck, Kris, called his brother Mark at the front, and mark would reattach to the next anchor point, we'd all set to freewheel, and go through the process again. It took about 6 of these rounds, each taking about 20 minutes to get through the gap. Now it was close to midnight. Both drivers and passengers were snoozing in their seats, aroused by the call on the radio that it was their turn. After we got through this, it was kind of a blur as everyone was dead tired. Phil had been able to latch onto a GPS track from the previous trip as we got closer to Gatcho Lake, which was a good thing as the forest had opened up and there were numerous unmarked trails that we had no idea which was the right route in the dark. By feel, GPS and radio we all followed Phil through what felt like a maze of turns and twists and finally brought us to Gatcho. Phil had gotten pretty confident due to his GPS waypoints and I think the only thing that kept us all awake was how fast he was trucking through the dark and us trying to keep up. We got all the way up to third gear, low range!
Suddenly we rolled into a corralled clearing and we recognized the compound of trappers cabins that are on the north end of the lake. Without further though I pulled up to one of the cabins, rolled out our bedrolls and Pamela, Oliver and I crashed for the night. It was fairly clean, and except for a curious packrat several hours later we slept well. Others took the route of a good stiff drink for relaxation, but for all of us in the morning the previous night felt rather surreal.