We took a light Sunday stroll through parts of the Tillamook State Forest, west of Portland. Joining me in Big Red (a 3B-powered BJ60) on this rainy President’s Day eve, is Chris “Young Turk” Pesek. The outing is long overdue; over the past year, we probably haven’t wheeled three times between us. (Let us pause for the compulsory moment of mourning and handwringing.) If that wasn’t bad enough, Old Man LGRT has been on our backs, threatening to strip our LGRT team status if we didn’t address our Nature Deficit Disorder “with all due haste”. YT (naturally) is in better shape than me, getting some time in on his dual-sport cycle. And his cycling buddy Eric is along for the ride in Big Red. (Eric has the wheeling bug now as well, and is furiously in search of his first wheeling rig. Feel free to post your vehicle suggestions to LGRT.)

After picking up ATV permits at the Shell station along Highway 6 (near milepost 42), and a few whacks on Big Red to free up a recalcitrant parking brake, we fly straight past Rogers Camp trailhead on the way to South Fork Road (just past milepost 28, on the left). We’d planned to do a route we’d done many times before: head up South Fork Road (through Lyda camp) to the Hoodraiser and nearby Hogs Back trails, follow C-Line Road southeast near the south boundary of the park to Firebreak Five, and then run Cedar Tree top to bottom (and north) on the way out to Rogers Camp and Highway 6.

Hoodraiser is a nostalgic favorite. Chris and I cut our wheeling teeth with the Northwest FJ Cruiser Club, which had adopted Hoodraiser when we were members. (And had FJ Cruisers. The FJ Cruiser has proven itself a notoriously effective gateway drug. Eric, take note.) With our friends in the NWFJCC, we’d spent many many happy hours maintaining the trail.

Hoodraiser is an easy drive with few turns, traversing up and over many swail berms, hence the trail’s name. On the second half of this warm-up trail, the snow depth steadily increases as we climb, until at last there are no recent tracks. On one of the last climbs, Big Red scoots up nicely, but I lose momentum and come to an inopportune stop midway in the climb. The loose, wet snow on top gives way to ice on a couple of quick tries to right matters. It’s early in the day, and the path of least resistance is to back down, turn around, and carry on.

Carrying on (according to plan) involves following South Fork Road uphill, parallel with Hoodraiser. With (now) expected results. We are prepared for this, but after a good stretch of additional rain and warmer temperatures, none of us really expected the amount of snow remaining. (NOAA weather reporting on local snow levels was also off; it would be snowing down to about 1500′ all day, whereas the reported snow level had been 2500-3000′.) On reaching the intersection of South Fork and C-Line (Hoodraiser exits at the top on C-Line), we’re in axle deep, or deeper, snow.

Over the years, Chris has displayed an impressive ability to throw his vehicles into snow with innocent abandon. And true to form, Big Red is soon — wait for it — stuck. A quick pull later, we proceed to saw and crawl the rigs to a nearby bare spot under some some tree cover.

Decision time take two. Air and chain up for the several miles drive along C-Line to get to our chosen next destination (Firebreak Five or Cedar Tree)? Or head back down South Fork to Highway 6 and head to the trails from Rogers Camp? Once again, we opt in favor of an earlier arrival at the (next) trails and limp back east on Highway 6 to the Rogers Camp exit.

The forest has been eerily quiet this Sunday. So far we’ve seen just a trio motorcycles in and around Hoodraiser; we’ll see just a couple trucks along Cedar Tree, running in the opposite direction. The number of trailers parked at Rogers Camp trail head also seems surprisingly light for this holiday weekend.

Our attempt to reach our destination from the east is rewarded. Though the snow gets deeper as we climb, we’re easily able to get to Saddle Mountain Road and to the top of Cedar Tree. Trail ho!

Turning in, we can see some recent tracks through the top of the trail. But Cedar Tree — named for the signature fallen cedar on a lower section under which many (but by no means all) rigs can pass — has a pretty dense canopy, so there’s not a ton of snow on it in any case. This is simply a great Pacific Northwest trail, twisting and turning up and down through the trees and vegetation. There’s not a lot of tricky stuff here, just enough to keep you sharp and provide opportunities for dusting cobwebs off basic skills such as seeing the trail over the hood, good tire placement (and general line picking), and left-foot braking. All in all, this is one delightful drive through the forest.

The biggest challenge today comes along a bottom section, with a tight squeeze between some rocks and an inopportunely-placed tree. You know the sort of thing: impending carnage from a downhill-side tree pushes you towards the rocks, while crawling the rocks on the uphill side tips the truck and its external bits into the tree. Rock. Hard place.

Through use, perhaps helped along by the recent spate of wet weather, these particular rocks have become much more dug out — certainly more than we can recall in about ten years of running Cedar Tree. So much so that some very recent, “creative” attempts to avoid the obstacle have widened the trail by cutting an undesignated bypass on the uphill side. It’s hard to know whether to attribute this to ignorance or disregard. But the governing principle here is pretty clear: if you’re unable or unwilling to stay on the trail through an obstacle, carefully turn back. Put another way, if there’s no designated bypass, don’t make one. Far from an exercise in ego-boosting, this is a simple matter of protecting trails so that we all can continue to enjoy them. Tread Lightly out there, kids!

Sizing things up, we make it over the obstacle relatively unscathed — the stock rear bumper assembly on a NAS Defender 90 enjoys asserting itself — with some light spotting and complete this delightful trail. By now it’s about 3:00PM and I have a good several hours ahead of me to make it back home north of Seattle. And so it’s back to the trailhead to air up, check things out, and head out. Any day wheeling….

Bonus travel-brochure notes

If you don’t already know, the OHV areas in Tillamook State Forest comprise a most excellent off-road trail system, with (according to the 2014 guide and map) more than 250 miles of OHV trails at all skill levels, for everything from motorcycles through four-wheel drive buggies. Managed by the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), TSF OHV areas also include multiple campgrounds and trailheads to help make the stay even more enjoyable. As with OHV areas elsewhere in Oregon, the ODF actively partners with clubs and other volunteers for trail maintenance and more should you and/or your club want to become involved as stewards of this considerable resource.

See the links below for additional details:

• TSF OHV map
• TSF OHV trail reports
• TSF blog
• TSF volunteering

In addition to being a multiple-use facility, TSF is also a working forest. So while roads and trails are generally well marked, junctions might come and go.

Pictures by Young Turk and Other Paul and Eric Hedaa

I’ve never regretted a day on the trail. Until today. Now, I haven’t been wheeling all of my life. I haven’t even been doing it for a full decade. But as with any set of complex skills that require learning by doing, I’ve had my share of “bad days” on the trails. There are many things I would have done differently. Different lines. Different execution. Different attitude. But not once did I seriously wish I’d been somewhere else.

That’s all changed. I made the trip from Seattle to Portland to spend some time with an old friend in my favorite offroad area, the Tillamook State Forest. I was hoping too, also make some new club friends as I joined them in exploring an area of the forest in which I’d never been.

The day started out promising with a short, middling 4×4 trail to get warmed up, followed by some forest roads — including crossing a few of the sizable snow fields that remained. The rest of the day was spent engaged in serious, nearly non-stop vehicular bushwhacking through massive overgrowth down The Road (much) Less Traveled.

I can see the eyeballs rolling. Pinstripes. Big deal. This is just part of the bargain, wheeling forest trails in the Pacific Northwest. But this was different. This was not (now) a trail so much as a glint of a promise of an opening through birch and fir groves. Neither was this a matter of the occasional stripe. Imagine, instead, an automated car-wash in which the brushes have been replaced by (say) blackberry — or angry wolverines. Or maybe, think of polishing your truck with a line trimmer. You get the idea. And then there are the ragged stalactite limbs of blow-down triangulating on the trail, threatening to tear through the soft top. Ten hours of driving (round trip) to take a beating like this on a mostly unmaintained trail? I don’t think so.

Well, so, why? Why continue? That’s a terrific question, for which I don’t think there’s a single answer. Part of it, I think, is the lemming-like inertia associated with finding oneself in the middle of all of this, in the middle of a pack, with no easy way out. But more on this later.

Another part of it has to do with trust, or better, with charity: with the idea that, however bleak things seem at the moment, it can’t go on like this. And, further: there must be some fantastic trail or vista or other compensating good not otherwise obtained.

These expectations were soundly thwarted on all fronts. It could go on like this — and did. There was no other trail; this was the trail. Happily, the trail did lead to a quite spectacular view, which but for the marine layer, would have afforded a view of the Pacific, as well as Mounts Hood and Rainier and St. Helens. But this very view could have been easily obtained, minus the risk, by a mere 13 or so miles of forest road capped by a few hundred yards of significantly less overgrown and clearly much more frequently traveled trail.

And so the path taken was unnecessary for attaining the splendid vista, and along the way presented but one or two brief sections that posed much technical challenge. (Whatever else it might be, the challenge of separating paint from body by navigating through heavy brush is not itself a test of driving skill. Avoiding obstacles lining the narrow trail while tending to the distraction posed by overgrowth is another thing entirely.) But then the certain risk of even cosmetic damage was wholly disproportionate to attaining that wonderful view. And of course there are many other trails in the Tillamook State Forest OHV system that offer vastly more technical bang for the buck (and across all skill and experience levels) as well as providing spectacular vistas.

Certainly the journey is at least as important as the destination. And some destinations are very fine indeed. But not just any route is warranted by the destination, however fine. And some routes, perhaps, are less traveled for good reason.

http://youtu.be/keDIJ5iNUls

OK. Deep breath. Now, exhale….

Venting has its place (and not just with brake rotors), but one of the things that’s always appealed to me about wheeling is the pace. And it’s a pace that — or me, anyway — lends itself well to reflection. And both in, and after, this experience, I’ve reflected a bit on the relationship between trail leader and participant.

Of course, the role of the trail leader is not one but many. (These many roles can effectively be distributed across multiple individuals in a group, as it’s a rare individual indeed who can do them all well. But that’s a story for another day.) And these roles involve trip preparation as well as situational thinking at run time. Among the former are to ensure, so far as reasonable, that prospective participants have (among other things):

• suitable equipment
• desired experience
• appropriate expectations

for the trail(s) to be run.

Tuning expectations could be as simple as noting in a pre-run email — or at least in a drivers meeting before hitting the trail — that the route to the run’s destination hasn’t been maintained since Land Rover stopped producing Series trucks, and consequently that on a pinstripe scale from 0-5 (5 being the worst), this one goes to 11.

This sort of informative, relevant pre-run communication is simple, cheap and relatively painless. Leaders can use follow up email (as needed) to further probe prospective participant’s level of preparation and experience. Prospective participants can use the information to gauge interest, self-assess their own preparedness — following up with the run leader as needed — and, perhaps, to opt out.

On this run, alas, the information that would have been most salient for me went without saying. No content rich pre-run emails. No real drivers meeting. Nothing of note communicated over the radio during the run. I do remember, however, before we launched into the warm-up trail (which was completely bereft of pinstripe opportunities), the trail leader strolling past the truck and saying something about enjoying pinstripes half under his breath. I didn’t know then what was to come.

Salient for me. For me. That’s it, isn’t it? Where am I in all of this, as a participant? I’m not at all shy, really, of the realities of wheeling in the forest. And yet on this run my expectations were dashed, with all of the side effects that ensued — not the least of which was a thoroughly unenjoyable day.

So what’s my role in this unhappy chain of events, or, at least, what should it be? Well, pretty clearly the right model of the leader/participant relationship here isn’t an active – passive one. This is sometimes easy to forget; it’s can be seductive to leave the “work” to others and just settle in and cruise. Ultimately we are responsible for ourselves on the trail (as elsewhere): picking a line, recovery, trail repair, food and water and shelter — and speaking up when things seem sideways.

As with trail leadership, this can start well before ever setting rubber to dirt — e.g., by asking questions when relevant bits of information haven’t been explicitly provided:

• What trails will we be running?
• What specific challenges and/or risks should I plan for?
• What can I expect more generally?

If something comes up on the trail, stop and say something. Don’t let it pass over in silence and just hope it works itself out.

The bottom line is, participating on a run is no more passive than leading one. (And leading one responsibly isn’t at all passive, and it’s certainly more than providing an opportunity to play Follow the Leader.) Really, we are all collaborating on a successful run, even as we play different roles.

I wrote above that I find the pace of offroading to lend itself nicely to reflection. This reflection, in turn, can lead to self-discovery. For myself, on this trip I learned that sometimes there are limits to what I’m willing to endure; and that sometimes (as in other areas of my life) I can be too passive and less than sufficiently assertive (which of course isn’t a license to be a tool ;). Perhaps this doesn’t resonate for you. Good. But if it does, then as Gibbs once told DiNozzo, “Don’t be like me. Learn from it.”

Note about the Author: Paul Martin, often referred to as Other Paul on this website contributed this story.  Other Paul has years of experience wheeling Toyota FJCs and 80 series and these days pilots a Land Rover Defender 90.  He has been a key part of many of our adventures including the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route, Washington Backcountry Discovery Route and many local trail runs. Every opportunity to wheel with Other Paul is an opportunity to learn.