aggregate

Day miles: 422
Trip miles: 1652
Tetsa River, BC to Teslin, BC

I woke up in a drizzle today, packed up and headed down the road. I soon began seeing signs for Tetsa River Outfitters and their “famous” cinnamon buns. Hungry and in search of coffee, I was sold right away. The camp ran on a generator but had a solar powered Trace system with a few strings of C&D batteries, which I recognized from my years working in telephone offices. When I asked about their origin, the proprietor came over to ask if I was familiar with the system at all as he was having problems with the inverter. Another patron and I looked it over, but the owner was pretty busy and we didn’t talk to him about it again. It seemed as though the former owners had passed away and he was struggling a bit to fill their shoes, but the food and coffee were good. Mostly I enjoyed the lifestyle that was communicated by the buildings and equipment. From the distance to anywhere, these folks clearly survived out here on their own ingenuity.

Canada has more road signs that are pictures rather than words compared to the United States. The best have been the wildlife road signs. I saw many more signs warning of wildlife than I saw actual wildlife. I wondered if Canada negotiates territory with animal herds, as I would often see a sign for moose, then one for horses, then another for moose. How do they negotiate their borders? Normally the signs for horses show the horse running or jumping, I can’t tell the difference, but then I saw one of a horse standing. Perhaps it was a sign for wild mules? Later I saw three signs in a few miles that had different size antlers and I was ashamed to have no idea what animal they were meant to represent.

Further down the road, I stopped for a late breakfast at Toad River lodge. I had an enjoyable long conversation over food with a couple traveling with their baby daughter from outside Toronto to Whitehorse, where she doing the Yukon River Quest from Whitehorse to Dawson City for some kind of charity.

Eventually the sun came out in time to have nice weather while passing Muncho Lake and appreciate its unique color. Back on the wildlife front, I was getting a little disappointed about not having seen any wildlife on the Alaskan Highway. Eventaully I started seeing Wood Bison. Then I saw an animal crossing the road up in the distance. When I passed where it crossed I looked in the woods and saw a wolf staring back. I have a fondness for wolves, so my disappointment was completely cured by this sight.

I spent the night at a campground on Teslin Lake at a truck stop. This provided some decent wireless access for uploading pictures and catching up on email, as well as having breakfast conveniently located nearby.

Seattle, WA to Alexandria, BC
Day miles: 543 633
Total miles: 543 633

I left on a typical Seattle day: overcast and gloomy. I did not set a time to leave, but ended up on the road around 10:30am. Since I live south of downtown, this unfortunately meant that I hit morning traffic getting through the core. I am the type that often prefers the sensation of progress over actual progress when it comes to driving, so I got off Interstate 5 for a bit downtown and took surface streets past the usual choke points on the interstate.

The drive to the Canadian border was familiar and uneventful. Once at the border I was directed to park and go inside to provide my CAFC 909 for my shotgun. They wanted to match the serial number on the paperwork to the firearm on their own, so I sat inside for around a half hour waiting. When all was finished and I came outside one of the border agents was waiting to talk to me about my bike. As it turns out, she has an F800GS as well and we chatted for fifteen minutes about aftermarket accessories before I went on my way. All told, I had a great experience at the border.

Once in Canada, I set my GPS to take me through Vancouver to Whistler. Years ago I had driven BC 99 and my memory of it made me want to do it again on the motorcycle. This was a great decision. Once past Whistler, it is remote two lane mountain road, following a river most of the way. The only setback is that it seems that every RV rental comes with directions to come here as well. Fortunately the bike has plenty of power and I was able to whip around all the RVs within a minute of coming upon them.

My detour ended near Cache Creek where I had a nice dinner and caught up on the Canucks/Bruins game. I’ve kept my minor allegiance to the Bruins to myself while up here for my own safety.

I had decided to ride the entire Alaskan (Alcan) Highway, so I headed for Dawson Creek, BC from here. BC99 had plenty of provincial parks along the way, and I was hoping to find one for the night now. Unfortunately I seemed to be in a dry spot for parks, so I unrolled my sleeping bag on the ground in a rest area alongside the highway for the night instead.

By the way, Spot made my name my messenger (tracker) unit. Being a less than creative chap, I named it “orange.” Because, it is. A couple people have thought that it says orange on the site so often because that is some kind of status of my device, like I am at Defcon 2 or something. This is not the case. Everything is green here!

I was having some pulsating when braking on my 1997 GMC K2500 Suburban (6.5L turbo diesel, 3/4 ton, 4×4). I hadn’t seen the brakes on this truck yet, so I put it up on four jackstands and pulled the wheels. The drums, rotors, shoes and pads all looked good. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the brake pads on the rear matched an extra set that I had ended up with that were too large for my other Suburban, a 1993 K2500 Chevrolet (5.7L gasoline, 3/4 ton, 4×4). To investigate further, I decided to pull the rotors.

As I would later learn, not only is this really hard on the 8 lug 8600GVW GM trucks, but I had already learned this lesson from the other Suburban, but had forgotten.

Rotor removal:

1. Loosen lugs
2. Loosen axle nut
3. Jack vehicle and secure with stands
4. Remove lugs and axle nut
5. Remove four 15mm bolts that hold the hub to steering knuckle *** READ BELOW ***
6. Pull hub off axle
7. Remove ABS sensor from hub, or disconnect from frame rail, if attached
8. Knock out lug studs from plate, being very careful not to damage the threads
9. Separate plate, disc rotor and hub
10. Installation is reverse of removal

Be extremely careful remove the four 15mm bolts. These are special bolts and cost five to seven dollars at a dealership each. They are torqued very high. I would strongly recommend dousing them in PB Blaster at least 24 hours in advance. Removal will require a long cheater bar. Use only high quality six point sockets. Take the time to either turn the steering wheel for each pair of bolts, or remove the tie rod ends.

I had three that would not budge. Heat did not help. A mild impact wrench did not help. Soon enough the bolt heads started to round off. “Bolt extractors” were laughably useless. In the end, I used special left-handed cobalt drill bits to drill the heads off the bolts. I started small and worked up to the size of the bolt just beyond the head, which is a little larger than at the threads. Thus I was careful to check my depth. I used progressively larger drill bits until I was able to remove the remains of the heads using an extractor.

Once the hubs was separated and I was able to remove it from the vehicle, I applied additional penetrating lubricant overnight. The next day I was able to break two of the bolts using a vise on the hub and a vise grip on the bolt. The remaining bolt wouldn’t budge. I went to my metal shop and tig welded a piece of angle iron to bolt remnants, headed the bolt and tried to use the leverage, but only ended up bending the angle iron. Then I cut the bolt off and drilled it out, but still could not get the bolt threads outs. I kept adding heat until I started to damage the hub. Lacking the correct size tap, and having damaged the hub, I replaced this hub altogether.

I happened to have a spare ABS sensor for this truck, due to getting the wrong one when working on the aforementioned previous truck. This was good, because when I had remove the sensor from this hub, the plastic around the pickup coil broke off. Ultimately, I suspect this sensor was all I had to replace to resolve my symptoms. However, due to the design I had to remove the rotors to get to it, so I put on new rotors and pads while I was able to.

A few years back I outfitted my 2006 Yamaha XT225 with a set of panniers from Happy Trails for camping. I really liked the solid industrial look that was also clean. I excluded any plastic panniers out of the gate because I’m pretty hard on gear and they’d surely get destroyed. Not a lot of companies made racks for the XT225 at the time, and I’m not sure if that’s changed. I’ve been looking recently for a set for my 2010 BMW F800GS, and I still prefer the Happy Trails look. Many other panniers are riveted together or have plastic pieces screwed on. I prefer a decent but solidly welded box to replacing a plastic trim piece any day. Speaking of dents, the XT went through a head on collision with an SUV years ago and while I had to replace the front end, the boxes came out unscathed.

The biggest failing of the the kit, which also includes the “SU Rack” for mounting, is the bracket for the rear turn signals. The rack used a number of factory mounting locations, which meant removing the passenger handles, but also required moving the turn signals further back. It came with an aluminum bracket that attached under the license plate. At some point all the off-road riding I did caused the bends in the bracket to break. Now shortened, I moved the bracket down under the rear reflector, bent it again and drilled new holes. This worked okay, except that the tail that holds the reflector is not very rigid and even tie-strapping the bracket to the support arm of the SU rack just below it didn’t help a whole lot.

I recently finally got around to a more permanent solution. I took a piece of scrap 1″ angle iron and cut it into two 1.5″ pieces. I drilled a couple holes for mounting the turn signals than welded these pieces to the rear support arm of the SU rack. Then I threw on some paint to protect the steel and mounted everything up. This is a very solid construction. My only concern would be that with the turn signals only a half an inch from the support arm, they could bounce a lot and cause damage to the bulb or the bulb socket, which I recently had to add a weld to repair one of as well.

I probably could have mounted them further out, and given the opportunity to do again I would consider putting something on the 45 degree turns of the rear support arm. I like this placement for keeping the turn signals in tight though, this keeps the width of the motorcycle down when the panniers are off it.

I had President’s Day off and it has been quite a while since I’d spent some time away from the city so I decided to go camping in the mountains for the long weekend. I looked through the snowshoe routes in my Mountaineers guide and decided to hike up and camp near Hex Mountain, then spend the next day on Sasse Ridge.

The guides say to start at Fire Road 116, which I believe is now Newport Creek Road. There is a turn off on the west side of Salmon La Sac Road where you can legally park. This area has been heavily developed though, and there are no signs directing you to the Hex Mountain trail head. Further, it’s on private property which is gated and signed no trespassing. A trip report indicates that this has been the situation for five years, with nothing built in the development in the interim. If I were to do it again, I would head up Corral Creek Road to Fire Road 118 looking for Trail 1340 to Hex Mountain instead. I saw a parking lot on the east side of Salmon La Sac requiring a forest pass on my way out, but I’m not sure what trail head access was there.

There wasn’t enough snow to wear the snowshoes; it was neither deep nor consistent. With everything strapped to my nearly sixty pound pack, I locked the truck and headed up. I avoided the yellow gate at the head of the road with no trespassing signs, which turned out to be the right way when my road ended. I got out my GPS and headed through the woods toward the old FR 116 which was on my topo map. I’m sure a good number of the people who come out here to snowshoe Hex Mountain never get there as there were plenty of tracks wandering around the development in what turned out to be the wrong direction. I came across a couple more small roads, but I continued through the woods based on my maps. As I came up the other side of creek I heard some folks following me. When I got to FR 116 I sat and rested while the couple and there dog caught up and chatted for a bit. They thanked me for being prepared and said they had been wandering down dead end roads until they found my trail. Five years prior they had hiked this route to the peak of Hex but couldn’t remember the route through the development. I let them know the trail head was a few hundred feet up the road and they headed off.

At the time, the Hex Mountain trail head was marked with a sign and a rock in the middle of the road. I discovered coming down that you can stay on the road and it will switch back to join the trail again later on, which is a much less steep option than jumping on the trail here. The sign has a tree growing up the middle of it, but you can spot the trail if you’re expecting it. The climb was quite the slog with my pack. It’s been a long time since I made such a hike as well. Eventually I reached the ridge and turned toward the peak of Hex Mountain. By this time I had started using my trekking poles, but it wasn’t until I hit the peak itself that I could have used the snowshoes. I should have left my pack here on the ridge, but I hadn’t decided where I was going to camp yet and focused on summiting. Being out of energy, combined with the powder and the steepness of the peak made this quite difficult but I eventually made it. I dropped my pack and took a long breather. Eventually I put it back on one more time, accidentally losing a drink I was saving for camp and watching it slowly slide away down the steep peak covered in snow.

I found a small clearing just off the Sasse Ridge trail and set up camp there. . It took a bit to get the tent all set up and everything unpacked. I was a little over-prepared and had expected a bit more snow. I checked a number of weather and avalanche forecasts before I left but hadn’t considered there was so little snow and didn’t look up the snow pack depth. I still had plenty of water but melted some and filtered it to boil for dehydrated dinner. I shouldn’t have bothered because the extra water mostly froze overnight. I had woke up pretty early that morning from excitement so I hadn’t gotten much sleep. Consequently I went to sleep shortly after sunset and slept about twelve hours through the night. Clearly needed, it sometimes takes being in the middle of nowhere out of touch for me to achieve this.

The next day I got out of the tent and made breakfast a while after sunrise. I had forgotten how terrible plain oatmeal was and washed it down with instant coffee. My pack is secondhand off a friend and the day pack is still missing a buckle, so I emptied it out, packed the essential emergency gear, and headed off across Sasse Ridge. There was a few inches of powder on top of the frozen snow, which often prevented the snowshoes from gripping but there was enough that I kept them on all day. I got a kick out of the signs prohibiting motorcycles which were as frequent as any other trail indicator, which were rare and useless. I couldn’t imagine myself up here on my dirt bike, but I’m sure the landscape is completely different in the summer. I did see a trip report that mentioned hunters on dirt bikes out around Jolly Mountain, so I suppose it’s a problem. For the majority of the trail you simply stick to the ridge. It climbs and drops a lot, producing some great views. However, the ridge gets quite narrow at times. With the snow, working around the peaks is quite difficult and I rarely considered it. At times the wind had blown the snow off the peaks and they were quite rocky. I wasn’t crazy about any of this. Eventually I found one I wouldn’t touch. I didn’t have the equipment or trailing to make it across this safely. Sasse Mountain wasn’t too far away, but I needed to turn around soon if I was going to make it back to camp before sunset.

The trip back was easier because I no longer had to break trail so the snowshoes gripped much better now. I made a couple wayfinding corrects through a bit of a valley here and there, but stuck to my original route. When I returned to camp I made dinner, and did the usual chores. While I fell asleep quickly, I wasn’t as tired as the night before and woke up for a while. Listening to the wind at night is quite different than sitting on a peak staring out over the mountains during the daylight. Eventually I fell back asleep until daybreak. After better oatmeal and coffee in the morning, I packed up and headed back down, determined to keep to the trail better on the way out to get a good GPS track of it. The winds had picked up and the clouds marked an incoming front. I had clear skies all weekend and was glad to be making it out before the weather arrived. Most of the way down the mountain I ran into a group of three hikers coming up. We chatted for a minute, I got pegged as a Canadian and we laughed about Maine being pretty Canadian. I have French Canadians on both sides of my family so it’s actually not that far off.

It was a great trip, but I wouldn’t do the same route again. As I mentioned, the development at the base of the Hex Mountain trail is confusing and uninviting. The peaks on Sasse Ridge were uncomfortable under the conditions. Besides, there is an amazing amount of backcountry in the Wenatchee National Forest, and all across Western Washington to be explored. I haven’t been camping enough since I moved to Seattle, hopefully much more will follow.