Sunday Driving.
My Uncle (Dad's brother) is up for a visit from Arizona. He and my dad had planned on a float trip down the Kobujk River from Bettles. It was a guided Photography thing, acctually, a class. Anyway, My dad had some medical issues which meant that the unusualy high water on the river made it too risky for him to continue, so a DeHavelant Beaver on floats brought him back to Fairbanks early. My uncle continued on the trip. I haven't seen his photos yet.
My uncle returned last wednesday, and on sunday, I borrowed a demo unit from work and we traveled part of a historic trail in the mountains just north of town. We were using a Polaris Mid-size Ranger Crew, a four place side-by-side. I have a few observations about that machine: The wheel track is a bit odd. it was originally designed to fit between the wheel wells ina pick-up truck bead, but the crew is too long to fit in any truck bed. What that means, is that on so called "Jeep trais" (not a term we really use here, but might help to describe an unimproved 'road') the wheels just hover on the inside lips of ruts. I started off, but my dad ended up driving most of the time. He had a hard time with thjis balencing act, so we spent most of the time at an odd angle with one wheel in a rut, and scraping along the over-hanging willow and alder. I suspect that the brand manager here will complain about the scratches.
That leads me to another observation regarding ground clearance and stability issues. The Crew has a longer wheel base than the standard model in order to accomodate the second row of seats. This means that it's easier to high-center. It's also not especially tall. The frame rails aren't especially farr off the ground, nor are the differentials. this not only increases the high-centering problem, it also means that riding in ruts and going over rocks greatly increase the chance of scraping the bottom of the machine on the ground. This happened a LOT.
Without a major redesign, the only way to solve the clearance problem would be to lift the machine and/or run larger tires. TZhis, however, would cause another issue to become dangerous. As it's designed to be narrow enough to fit into a truck, and it's relatively tall, despite it's low clearance, the Polaris Mid-size Ranger crew is fairly top-heavy. Side-hilling is downright scary, I think we came pretty close to tipping over a couple times.
Anyway, as to the ride itself: We loaded up the sideXside at work Saturday evening, and kept it at Dad's house overnight. Saturday night, predictably, I didn't get much sleep, and was slow to get moving the next morning. I got to Dad's somewhere between 10:30 and 11am, and we headed out to the trailhead of the Circle/Fairbanks trail, which is just a bit down a road on the north side of Cleary Summit, a bit more than 20 miles from my dad's house. We offloaded and headed out.
the day was cool, and for the first couple hours, the mostly-cloudy sky would occasionally let out a ray of much warmer sun. It was a bit breazy in the mountains, but as the day went on it became more cloudy, less windy, and cooler still. It didn't rain though.
The first part of the trail was pretty well traveled, and easly going. As we progressed, there were several off-shoots that led to hinting camps and look-out areas that are used in the fall to glass for game. After each of these off-shoots, the trail became less worn, rougher, and narrower. We went on one of the off-shoots which too us to a minor summit with a really good view. We took photos, had some food. The trail to that point was rough, rocky, and had a few side-hill parts that made it feel as if we were about to roll over.
Further on, the trail narrowed more as we decended toward the valley floor. In the past when we had taken this trail, we usually would come to a clearing by a creek, beyond wich was a nigh impassible section of swamp. This is where we would usually turn around. However, this time, it looks like someone made a new trail, which was wider, and so we followed it. It went further up-valley, but there were many, many alder and willow trees overhanging the trail, which made travel slow and arduous. Eventualy we came across an obsticle that was a sort of strange mud/muskeg hybrid. If something very large with what looked like tractor tires haddn't already chewed it up, I think we could have gotten through pretty easily. We might have gotten through as it was, but I didn't want to risk getting the unit stuck, as we didn't have a winch or a second vehicle to aid in extraction. So, we turned around and headed back. We stopped by the Fox Roadhouse/Silver Gultch Brewery about half an hour before they were about to close for a beer and some food. The beer was good, the food took quite some time and was obviously re-warmed rather than cooked to serve.
Although we didn't stop to pick many, there are blueberries up there. I think next week they'll probably be at their peak. With all the rain we've had this year, they're big and plump, and fairly numerous, but watery and somewhat less flavorful than they can be.
Because of the trail conditions, we rarely got much above 20 mph, often we were under 5 mph. We were on the trail for probably nine hours, and went about 35 miles, round trip (about 70 miles round trip from my dad's driveway). It was a decent ride, but I'd like to verify where the original trail lead. I'd also like to know where that new trail goes. There's also a trail that goes on a ridge on the other side of the river, and it looks old, where does it go? I've started in on the trail where it meets the Steese highway again at 91 mile summit, but never went far enough to meet up with the part where we usually turn around. I'd like to connect it all up at some point. I need a propper weekend to do something like that, and probably a more capable vehicle than what we were driving. Much of that trail would be good on my BMW, provided I had the propper tires. In fact, it'd be quite a bit faster.