During most trips something always seems to go wrong but this one was as close to perfect as possible.
My girl friend (Natashia) and I left (late) Friday morning headed to Jones Lake for the first part of our long awaited winter camping trip. Our attraction to Jones stemmed from the beautiful mountain ranges and given its high altitude, the strong possibility of decent snow accumulation.
We explored a few side roads enjoying the elegant scenery.
After get stuck on a snowy uphill cross cut along a logging road(by ourselves), we opted to not push our luck anymore and set up camp on the lake front.
The next morning we quickly packed up and headed to the bottom (north) end of the lake to eat our yogurt and check out the low water level.
Dora with her new trasharoo
We stopped at the diner in Harrison for lunch and walked around the area.
Heading down the West side of Harrison our original plan was to go to Hale Creek and camp where a couple buddies were going to meet us the next day before we went wheeling. While heading down the narrow trail we decided not to take chances as the road was quickly becoming more difficult. As a result we continued to Twenty Mile Bay.
Harrison West Forestry Road
Because of our longer than anticipated visit to Harrison we arrived at Twenty Mile Bay after dark but quickly set up. The next morning we awoke in the back of the truck to this.
After about an hour of taking our time to get up and eat breakfast, the peaceful morning we were enjoying was halted by the arrival of Kevin and Dan in Kevin's Turbo Mazda Truck. They came prepared to wheel with a shot gun and a full tank of gas to burn.
After waiting a little longer for Brian, we decided to head to Mystery Forestry Road in hopes that we would cross paths with him sooner, luckily a couple minutes after we arrived at the road he showed up sporting his new black stinger on the front of his white Jeep.
Quickly our group set off towards Chehalis Lake using the new map book Natashia had bought me for my birthday. As I mentioned the trip was almost perfect, but... I left my GPS at the house. We got Kevin to pick it up the day before he came out... only to leave it at his house!
We encountered a couple overturned vehicles on the trail.
Biggest obstacle: River crossing
After carefully crossing the river we reached the large cross cuts in the road and deemed them impassable due to the snow and ice.
Adjacent to the cross cuts was an ATV trail that was calling our names. We decided to check it out and to our surprise it lead to Chehalis Lake via the abandoned camp ground.
Driving the beach.
The drive home was pretty uneventful with the exception of crossing the river once again. It posed a decent challenge especially with the slushy bank on the exiting side that was worsen to due us already driving over it once.
Overall the trip was an amazing success and we lucked out once again as the weather was amazing!
A few pics:
