Another great day and ride for this spring of 2017. Six of us meet at Chatanika Lodge for breakfast at 9:00 AM and then drove to 42 Mile Steese to hit the White Mtn Trails. We discussed going to 85 Mile, but the clouds were looking low and it was windy, figured it’d be a miserable ride higher up.
The parking lot was bare of any snow and that made getting the 100 feet to the trail and snow interesting, dang sleds don’t like turning on dry asphalt and dirt. Anywho, we all got on the trail and headed to Cache Mtn Cabin. The ride was good, new snow from the past couple days and the sun was out most of the time, a bit flat light and no tracks to see, so leading I did miss a couple turns, Ooops.
The trail was hard pack beneath the inch or two of new snow and deep and soft off the trail. The two times I missed the trail dumped me into a$$ deep sugar powder. No one was at the cabin when we arrived so we took a break and then headed to Cache Mtn Divide and did some exploring. Brent and Dean did a little riding up the side hills of the Divide and then we all headed to a little pass a few of us knew. It took us south and wrapped around the base of Cache Mtn, easy ride, too easy.
It was so easy riding that Allen, Steve and Brent decided to make a new trail by dropping into the valley we were looking down at and circle back to the main trail. Dean, Nick and I decided we’d wait and watch, if they got down in the valley we’d meet at the main trail…. Hahahahaha
About a half mile into the their exploratory side trip they got stuck about 8 times and after an hour or more decided it would be the better side of valor to just come back to where Dean, Nick and I were watching their antics of rolling their sleds, doing head over the windshield and hood dives (Steve) and wallering through waste deep snow while we smiled and had coffee. Did we go help, nope, figured a couple more stuck sleds would not behove us, but it was entertaining.
We got back to the rigs around 6:00 PM and that made a nice 8 / 9 hour day of riding and a good 70 plus mile run. Plans have been made to get back to that valley and cut in a trail for the loop, Cache Mtn back through the valley of sugar powder and to the main trail. Of course we’ll need to ask BLM if that’d be OK, but it would really make a nice 15 mile or so loop.
Well as I said, another great spring days, don’t know how many, if any, we’ll have left, so get out while you can for this season and look to some great summer ATV rides this summer.
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