Note: Stephens view of the morning
I woke up after my first night in my hammock rested and ready to hit the trails. I had packed a nice IMP (Individual Meal Packet) of breakfast sausages for myself to enjoy. This isn’t your usual boil in bag. This is genuine Canadian military gourmet cooking. I had sausages, apple sauce, oatmeal, hot chocolate, juice mix, coffee, and a bun with jam all in a neat little package. I did have to warm some of it up but in the end it was a tasty way to start the day and get something warm in my belly.
For those who are interested, the hammock worked out great. I had to get up and fiddle with the height of the foot end to make it a bit lower. I also was a bit concerned about my stuff. The only place to keep any of it was on the ground under the hammock. If there was a driving rain it might have gotten wet so I might pack a giant garbage bag for next time and just shove everything in that, then put it under the hammock.
Not 5 minutes down the highway from the campground we were on the trail, and what a trail it was! All snowmobile trails in the winter they were a good run of hilly twisty double track. Nothing too difficult but just enough puddles and interesting terrain features to not get bored.
The trail.
Frank stopped at an intersection.
Chris waiting to find out which direction to go next.
Some of the puddles were bigger than others and needed a certain amount of caution when going through. So far nothing was too difficult and we made decent time on our fully loaded bikes.
That’s when we came to the big one. WOW. Ted had warned us about the big puddle we were going to have to face but I was confident that it would be no problem because of the “bypass”. Well that bypass is not the easiest option either. A decently steep uphill through the woods to get to a open section of lumpy rocks followed by a steep and twisty downhill back through the woods.
The big water hole
We checked it out thoroughly and concluded that it might be possible to do we all decided that pushing bikes across the bypass would be easier and quicker than striping a bike and trying to drain it of water.
The decent. It’s hard to see but easy enough if you take it slow.
The bigger bikes walked their luggage across and the smaller bikes rode the bypass with no problems. Eventually we were all on the other side, safe and most importantly DRY!
Not for long…
As I was near the back of the pack we came upon the glorious sight of Ted up to his knees in water standing on his bike.
We all parked and proceeded to test the water with sticks to map out what the bottom was like. As it turns out there is a pair of ruts near the left side but the right side is only a foot deep. We would all have no problem getting across but there was still the matter of getting Ted unstuck.
In the end, and with soggy feet, Ted was freed and we all crossed the puddle without any more issues.
I woke up after my first night in my hammock rested and ready to hit the trails. I had packed a nice IMP (Individual Meal Packet) of breakfast sausages for myself to enjoy. This isn’t your usual boil in bag. This is genuine Canadian military gourmet cooking. I had sausages, apple sauce, oatmeal, hot chocolate, juice mix, coffee, and a bun with jam all in a neat little package. I did have to warm some of it up but in the end it was a tasty way to start the day and get something warm in my belly.
For those who are interested, the hammock worked out great. I had to get up and fiddle with the height of the foot end to make it a bit lower. I also was a bit concerned about my stuff. The only place to keep any of it was on the ground under the hammock. If there was a driving rain it might have gotten wet so I might pack a giant garbage bag for next time and just shove everything in that, then put it under the hammock.
Not 5 minutes down the highway from the campground we were on the trail, and what a trail it was! All snowmobile trails in the winter they were a good run of hilly twisty double track. Nothing too difficult but just enough puddles and interesting terrain features to not get bored.
The trail.
Frank stopped at an intersection.
Chris waiting to find out which direction to go next.
Some of the puddles were bigger than others and needed a certain amount of caution when going through. So far nothing was too difficult and we made decent time on our fully loaded bikes.
That’s when we came to the big one. WOW. Ted had warned us about the big puddle we were going to have to face but I was confident that it would be no problem because of the “bypass”. Well that bypass is not the easiest option either. A decently steep uphill through the woods to get to a open section of lumpy rocks followed by a steep and twisty downhill back through the woods.
The big water hole
We checked it out thoroughly and concluded that it might be possible to do we all decided that pushing bikes across the bypass would be easier and quicker than striping a bike and trying to drain it of water.
The decent. It’s hard to see but easy enough if you take it slow.
The bigger bikes walked their luggage across and the smaller bikes rode the bypass with no problems. Eventually we were all on the other side, safe and most importantly DRY!
Not for long…
As I was near the back of the pack we came upon the glorious sight of Ted up to his knees in water standing on his bike.
We all parked and proceeded to test the water with sticks to map out what the bottom was like. As it turns out there is a pair of ruts near the left side but the right side is only a foot deep. We would all have no problem getting across but there was still the matter of getting Ted unstuck.
In the end, and with soggy feet, Ted was freed and we all crossed the puddle without any more issues.
