The only real sign of life was a fishing lodge so we pulled in and asked the fellow where this road was that our map showed. I explained where we had tried to get through and he laughs and says even an atv wouldnt have made it, the trail has been forgotten for years. He asks why I dont just take Grassy Road right to Timmins as its a smooth gravel road and about a 100 km's in length. Why not indeed...ARG! Nuvi ! Second time today that bugger tried to screw us over !
What to say about the Grassy Road? Awesome ! Smooth sandy road that is a roller coaster and goes for just over 100 km's. Only one small washout and one tree across the road, other than that the only obstacle was the occasional dust storm from oncoming traffic. About half way we took a break and had a snack. The weather was great, no bugs, about 24 degrees celcius out and the sun was shining. We're half an hour from a hotel, shower and a night on
the town...YEHAA!!!
We roll into Timmins and stop at the first motel we see to check rates. Being a Wednesday we figure we should be able to bargain for a good rate. Wrong, every motel is sold out in town and so are the ones in the towns within 150 km's of Timmins. There is some sort of mining convention going on and its the busiest week of the year.
Total burn on Ewan and he was really looking forward to a power siesta (in his own room) and a night out. Limited choices at this point so we decide that since its only 4:30 pm we can do the gravel highway to the next town on the TCAT, Kapasaksing. Again we have a bit of a struggle finding the road on a map. Juts west of town we find the biggest, widest gravel highway I've seen. It says 70 km's to some mine and Nuvi is saying there is a way through, mind you its 164 km's. Yehaa, a bonifide gravel highway. Time to make some miles! After about 30 km's of us doing Dakar speeds Nuvi says take a right. Hmmm...this one in't quite a higway but a gravel road, who cares its a well used road and heading in the right direction.
Just to keep you on your toes ...
These folks OWN the roads. Once one see's you, you become known on the cb's. Until then your a ghost out there, I'd encourage you to be careful :deal
Is the outcome of this predictable? The roads get narrower and rougher. The road turns into a trail. The Trail gets rougher and at times quite thick
with sand. Our chosen route needs to change but Nuvi has everything under control .....
We begin to encounter water crossings. the sand around here gets a bit slick when wet and given we don't have four wheel drive the technicque to water crossing is to hit them at speed. Once you get into it you can't see squat, even with the wipers going at full speed. Down shift as required and hope when you come out the other side you are still on the road. this goes well for the first few until we get to the big one. Remember early when I mentioned the golden rule about not crossing anything you aren't a 100% sure you can come back across? We debate it. In the end the gps says we are 50 km's from town so we decide to role the dice.Attack in second gear, down shift blindly into first and revving the crap out of it then nothing. It stalls or rather cuts out. 2 seconds later the windsheild clears and voila we are ouot of the water sitting comfortably on the road even. A quick turn of the key and the engine won't turn over. A quick desperate and paniced look at Ewan shows his face is saying the same thing. Two more tries and the engine won't turn over. We both quickly unplug the firdge and other electronics from the vechicle as we both know that you don't get too many tries out of a battery and we are a long way out into the middle of nowhere and the chances of anyone coming along for the next few days are slim to none. How long does it take to walk 50 km's of trails and what do you do to get a vechicle recovered from out here anyways. No towtruck is making it back here. One more try with the key and just
before turning it back the motor does a slight turn over. Hmmmm...try again and it does the same but when I turn the key back it stalls again. **** is what we are both thinking, we pause and don't say anything. One look at Ewan and he nods, we both know this is probably the last try. It starts and I keep the key turned and try to pump a little gas, it stalls! All of a sudden I have turrets as the tension comes out in a tidal wave of verbal diahera.
One last try and it starts! I think I'm shaking a bit at this point from the nerves.
We head on down the trail and it begins to get very sandy, wet and rough. Hey a bear, hey another bear! Okay this may sound made up but Ewan will destify that all of a sudden we were in what appeared to be a zoo full of bears. We came up on one who wouldn't even budge off the road. twenty feet we pulled up in fornt of it and it just stood there staring at and it didn't look happy. Eventually he slowly walked down the road and into the bush. Holy crap we both say, imagine we were on bikes. We stopped a bit further ahead to take a piss and the bear prints in the mud were crazy. First off they were everywhere and secondly there must have been one big son of a gun as one set of prints were massive. Bigffot massive and very fresh. Needless to say it was a quick break. One bear is worth mentioning more than the others as it was huge. Watching him run down the road in front of us was amazing. Muscle or fat I don't know but his entire body was rippelling as he ran, it was very cool to see.The trail began to get narrower and narrower the further we went, for a strecth it was only atv width (about a half of what my truck tires are) and we had to decide if the left or right tire road in the rhubarb. This went on for dozens of kilometers (or so it felt), the entire time we are madly checking the gps to see how much further we had to go. 6.3 km Ewan would say, 10 minutes later one of us would check again and it would be 6.23 km's, lol. Not gonna say panic more like anxiety goping on as it was getting a bit late and we REALLy wanted to get to that highway. Every time you came around a corner and it was dry and straight a surge of joy would go through me, yehaa 300 more meters down. We were crawling in first gear at this point in the game and the engine starts to surge...yikes.
Well it was not too be, 4 yellow metal poles in the ground were around one of the corners. NO!!!!!!!!!!! Leave the truck running and run up to them and yank it out of the ground (yes I put it back). If it hadnt of come free I think I intended to just ram it with the truck and drive over it. Look at the width of the bride Ewan says. Holy crap, a brand new frsh lumber looking bridge with a sign saying something to the likes of "built ny the Smooth Rock falls ATV Club" or something like that. Nice bridge and all but maybe you could put a sign back on the road about 80 km's saying no exi5t for trucks !!!!! Well maybe most trucks dont come this way, lol
Really, freaking really....six more freaking kilometeres! really ? Back in the truck and discuss what to do. We should just camp here and head back in the morning. The forecast said maybe some rain tonight, what would that do to the trails as we barely made it here in the first place. The only food we have is raw beef and a barbque, we are gonna be watched by bears big time if we start cooking steaks out here is what we discussed. ya no freaking way am I spending the night here, its way to freaky knowing that we are in a bear zoo. It would have been like in a horror movie where some one says seriously, you walked into the dark abandoned house? Keep in mind I'm no stranger to living with bears and other wildlife. I live on a dirt road in the country and we have bears and wolf sized coyotes within 100 feet of the house at times, but seeing bears that dont get scared of a moving truck and all the noise it creates freaks me out. 15 years ago I did a year at college doing an outdoor mountain course. One of the classes was taught by some old swiss dude and I remember very clearly him saying "forget everything you know about bears and remeber this, they are like humans and everyone once in a while you may run into an assh0le. Well I think this place was full of assh0les :nod
Back, I can't believe we have to go back. To where..Timmins was the decission and we'd figure out what to do there. Find a campsite outside of town or something. Again through the bears, one ran down the road in front of us for a while and even did a small water crossing for our viewing pleasure. I have limited pictures of the bears as I was either too freaked out to take photo's or they came out super blurry.
We made much quicker tikme getting back the 160 km's to town as we were now on a mission, to make it back before dark. We got into Timmins around 9 pm just as it was getting dark. Truck can really soak up those big hits :thumb After all the Dakar driving we were pumped, first time I ever got blisters from a steering wheel.
After making it to town we stopped and made some choices. The first logic behind it was if there is no way through to Kap on gravel then I may have to alter the route and head west, the second being we didnt feel like driving a couple of hundred km's on salb to kap and then ride the loop around Abitibi canyon if it wasnt goping to make the TCAT. Money and time off work are limited and there was no way we were going to figure out another road sitting around up here. I'd spent a fair amount of time finding this road, posted the route on local forums, etc and no one mentioned a newly build narrow bridge :cry
So we bombed south and drove for a hour or two to a town called New Lisgard. Booked into a cheap motel and headed into town to see what we could find at close to midnight. One pub open with three little squirtsa doing very loud kareokee. bad tunes from the 80's at that, Vanilla Ice is the one that rings a bell. Needless to say the stop was quick but the cold whiskey certainly tasted good. Time behind the wheel for today was about 16 hours and we did about 1100 km's. Keep in mind alot of that was exploring back roads and heqading up obscure trails. This day was a long and tiring day. Sleep came easy might be a better way to put it.
So there it is, the first stab at pushing the route this year, over the coming months I look forward to hearing from the other folks involved and seeing some pics from their area's of Canada and hearing their tales of adventure. I am a bit biffed we got turned back but in the end we did get some solid terrain for the TCAT and pushed the trail quite a way north. These new additions fit perfectly with the intent of the TCAT, remote non paved roads that bring you to places you might not ever have otherwise seen :thumb
A fun ride on bikes for sure, it looks like it will become a technical option and the main will follow a mix of gravel and paved roads.
