New here to "The Portal" and what an awesome place! I just took a short trip to Capitol Forest near Olympia, WA and wanted to post it.
I don't have a tricked out rig (yet) it's a stock 2001 XJ that I put BFG All Terrains on, and push it as far as she goes, which is a long way. No rock crawling, or going out looking for challenging terrain, just a sense of curiosity that gets me into trouble, and I need a vehicle that is reliable, and will get me out of jam if I get myself into one. She's the first car I ever bought and she has treated me right from day one. Here is a pic.
Back to the trip, the name of the game today was the weather! Sun, hail, rain snow, wind, slush, you name it we had it today. Taking off under clear skies by the time we hit the "Welcome to Capitol Forest" sign, it was hailing like crazy! Then half way up the mountain we were getting blasted with a gnarly snow storm laying down about 3 inches in the hour it took us to get to the top.
Next stop was Porter Creek, expecting worse weather on that side of the mountain, we were preparing for the worst, but in typical fashion the Black Hills proved unpredictable again as about half way down we were treated to sunshine and excellent views.
As we headed further down the mountain we noticed the road tree clearings had been getting progressively worse, and started to wonder if the bridge at the bottom had been washed out. Well low and behold about 2 miles from our turn to go to the south end of the forest the bridge had been washed out... oh well in no rush, and no other way around it we started back tracking back up the mountain, back into the storm. Made it back to the top, where even more snow had fallen and the wind was getting worse. As quick as it got bad it became nice just as soon, a quick try to get to Fuzzy Top was cut short by down trees (next time I really need to bring the chain saw!) but all was forgiven by finding an overlook where we were able to get views of all the low lands from Olympia to Centrailia. Unfortunetly I couldn't capture the view on camera.
There will be plenty of more trips to come, and hopefully some mods to the XJ to go explore more places!
I don't have a tricked out rig (yet) it's a stock 2001 XJ that I put BFG All Terrains on, and push it as far as she goes, which is a long way. No rock crawling, or going out looking for challenging terrain, just a sense of curiosity that gets me into trouble, and I need a vehicle that is reliable, and will get me out of jam if I get myself into one. She's the first car I ever bought and she has treated me right from day one. Here is a pic.
Back to the trip, the name of the game today was the weather! Sun, hail, rain snow, wind, slush, you name it we had it today. Taking off under clear skies by the time we hit the "Welcome to Capitol Forest" sign, it was hailing like crazy! Then half way up the mountain we were getting blasted with a gnarly snow storm laying down about 3 inches in the hour it took us to get to the top.
Next stop was Porter Creek, expecting worse weather on that side of the mountain, we were preparing for the worst, but in typical fashion the Black Hills proved unpredictable again as about half way down we were treated to sunshine and excellent views.
As we headed further down the mountain we noticed the road tree clearings had been getting progressively worse, and started to wonder if the bridge at the bottom had been washed out. Well low and behold about 2 miles from our turn to go to the south end of the forest the bridge had been washed out... oh well in no rush, and no other way around it we started back tracking back up the mountain, back into the storm. Made it back to the top, where even more snow had fallen and the wind was getting worse. As quick as it got bad it became nice just as soon, a quick try to get to Fuzzy Top was cut short by down trees (next time I really need to bring the chain saw!) but all was forgiven by finding an overlook where we were able to get views of all the low lands from Olympia to Centrailia. Unfortunetly I couldn't capture the view on camera.
There will be plenty of more trips to come, and hopefully some mods to the XJ to go explore more places!
