Saturday morning, I loaded up my two dogs and my sister’s dog, that right 3 dogs, and headed out on a day trip adventure. My main objective was to map trails for OnX because I am involved in the trail guide program with them. We ended up just south of Spanish Fork and explored down some really neat trails. In the lower elevations (around 5,000 feet) the trails were dry. As we climbed higher the trails became muddy then turned to snow covered. Nothing too sketchy as the snow was packed down and easy to drive on. I traveled down a side road that showed it led to a lake. About a mile from the lake the trail became impassable due to a solid frozen waterfall on a hill. It was something I had never encountered. I unloaded the pups and we hiked the mile to the frozen lake.
A few takeaways from my first snow wheeling adventure. First of all, snow wheeling is a ton of fun and gives a whole new perspective on exploration. The scenery is gorgeous and the forest seems still due to the lack of other vehicles. I also learned, not the hard way, that you have be over prepared when venturing out this time of year. More things can go wrong and there is less help when needed. Lastly, I learned that trails can easily be blocked by running water that freezes and makes them completely impassable or a variety of other things such as seasonal closures.
It was a fun day trip with a few lessons learned. As is the case most of the time, you just have to remain flexible with your plans and make the best of what is dealt to you. Hope you all had a fun weekend as well. Keep on exploring and keep on learning.
Frozen waterfall!? I suspect it was in the road and you couldn’t drive over it (ice).
Got a photo? Sounds neat.
One of my take aways when moving from dirt to mud to snow is mindfulness around temps. I’ve driven some off camber roads in sub-freezing temps that, when the sun comes out, turned into mud and thus off-camber dynamics become different. Mindful around those types of trail dynamics, temps, sun direction, are noteworthy.
Yes. The “frozen waterfall” was ice covering the road. The water ran down the road and froze thus causing it to be impassable. I actually don’t have a picture .
Regarding the trail dynamics, I did notice that as the day progressed some of the trails that had snow on them started to melt and turn to mud. Using the OnX app, I have access to layers such as slope aspect and slope angle that help me better prepare for situations like this.
Believe me Zach, and some of these guys know this story, but I can attest to being over prepared when doing this! A couple of years ago my son and I ended up stranded on top of Lake Mountain (behind EM, Saratoga Springs) when we realized that the snow was too deep to go forward and that we couldn’t go back up the way we’d come! Fortunately I keep the rig pretty stocked so we were prepared and fine to sleep in the car that night. It ended up being 5 weeks before we got enough snowmelt to go back up and pick up the poor girl!
Dang dude, that’s a crazy story. I actually was thinking about that when we went out. If I had enough provisions to spend the night if need be. Unfortunately, I realized I wasn’t. Next time I will take that lesson with me and bring some stuff for an emergency overnight if need be. Thanks for sharing and I’m glad you were able to get your rig out eventually.
Wait until you find the road back has a huge tree blocking it, that wasn’t there when you went in. Took an hour but was able to winch it just enough to get by.
Both of my vehicles have six packages of backpack meals, a Jetboil and some waterproof gear.
Never actually needed them but sometimes its nice to be able to take off on a short trip and not worry about food. I make sure none of it is more than two years old.
That’s always a fun one, back in November snow moved in, with some heavy winds heard trees crashing down everywhere, woke up to a massive down tree just out of camp, had no choice but to go WAY off trail to get around it due to how many trees it was interlocked with, and had about 5 or 6 more to winch out of the way further down the trail on the way out.
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