Love going down a new forest road

Damn, that looks absolutely beautiful all that wilderness!
Oh its pretty cool in this area, Missoula is a city that sits at the bottom of what was a prehistoric lake. They call it the hub of 5 valleys, so each mountain range which there are 6 of each has its own national forest, so its a different adventure in every direction in what seems to be endless mountain forests.
 
Oh its pretty cool in this area, Missoula is a city that sits at the bottom of what was a prehistoric lake. They call it the hub of 5 valleys, so each mountain range which there are 6 of each has its own national forest, so its a different adventure in every direction in what seems to be endless mountain forests.

I'll bet! I can imagine how those forests would just go on forever. You'd never run out of places to explore.
 
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Story time:

So last week I tell my wife i'm going for a ride to check out this Jeep Trail I saw on google maps, i've been to the trailhead before but have only dipped my toes in but I can see it goes on for a long way on the map. It started off with a good hill climb and set the mood for the trail right away. I had intentions of riding the Jeep Trail until it intersected with a Forest Road not too far out but it' looked like a good run maybe a couple of hours.

(We did this entire ridge line Graves Creek Jeep Trail till it intersected with Indian Gulch).
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This trail was fun, it had many good elements too it (hill climbs, water crossings, fallen trees) it just kept going and going and started to seem like it was not going to end. At some point or another we reached the top of a mountain, and we go down the other side where there are some rocky shelves that we drop off of. They are about a foot or so down and a few in a row, something that I could not go back up easily or at all. We keep going as i'm sure we will intersect with this Forest Road on the map I researched earlier.

We keep going as now we've felt like we've past the point of no return and must keep going, but the trail keeps climbing and climbing in elevation. My wife is super worried at this point or maybe she was way before this point but now she's really worried. Just when the trail starts to go down hill and seems like we may be meeting with a Forest Road it started to climb again. The trail get much more intense at this point. It gets narrower, trees get tighter, brush is overgrown , there's no tire tracks on the trail anymore from anyone else. We see some "hoof" prints periodically as I believe this turned from a Jeep Trail into a Pack Trail. We never encounter this other Forest Road that we hoped to and this trail took us on one hell of a trip that we won't soon forget.

I was driving at inclines greater than 45 degrees most of the time, some with erosion up the middle of the trail so my wheels are straddling a crevasse of sorts while climbing and mowing down brush at the same time. Some had scree as well while some had larger rocks to avoid or bump over. At some other unknown point we encounter several pretty good water crossings, the deepest being up to the bottom of my front bumper in depth. One had some sticky mud in the bottom but most were hard packed rock and dirt that were flooded part of the trail. Others had tree stumps and roots under water that you could not see until you were feeling them as we were trying to cross. So many obstacles were all around us.

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This trail we were on kept going up then down and up again and had us traversing this forest for 5 hours before we finally made it to a fork in the road. The fork then had and up and a down, where we drove up first then quickly realized it wasn't going to let us out so we backtracked. Then tried the downhill route and that led us for a couple miles to a locked yellow gate. On the other side of the locked gate was a main gravel road that would lead us out of the forest. One side of the gate had a steep hillside and the other side was a ditch that had several 12" or so rocks in a row across it. The ditch was the only option, it was barely wide enough for a short wheelbase Jeep, lol. I am not a rock crawler by any means or set up for rocks, but I was disconnected and aired down, I stacked a few rocks and I flexed my way through the gatekeeper. We hit the gravel and we were out of there! It was absolutely intense, I didn't take many pictures as it was nerve racking most of the time and my wife wanted to get out of there, but it was also fun and she did say she was impressed with the shit this TJ just got us through!

I do have a few pictures though of the area and of my TJ at the highest point of the trail where we reached a place no Jeep has been before!

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The Siuslaw National Forest will be my new go-to, i'm up in the Hebo district exploring my backyard trails. It was pouring all day and we had plenty of my new favorite weather condition (heavy fog). The rainforest NF roads are pretty interesting, with lots of exposed tree roots and everything is mossy...it amazing.

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I set off on NF-1861 on Christmas Day for a hike up atop of Cascade Head on the Oregon Coast.

Upon entering the forest road that takes you to the trailhead (which is a 4 mile road), I encounter a fallen tree with roots attached in the middle of the road. Weird part was I could not find where the tree came from as it had nothing uprooted anywhere nearby, like it just fell out of the sky. Anyway, one could either go left which would have you going over the 12" diameter trunk or go right which would put you in an off-camber muddy ditch situation.

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I did both for fun.

So in turn this tree ended up being a gatekeeper for most because minutes after I bypassed it and made it to what was the next obstacle (just around the corner) I could hear other cars and people trying to figure out what to do and how to make it through. For fun I had to take a peek and see what they were working with vehicle wise and I saw a couple generic looking SUV's so I knew they wouldn't be making it either way.

Which brings me to this situation...

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Once I realize my Jeep is low enough to clear under the tree here, I break out the axe and within 5-10 minutes i've got it cleaned up pretty good. This is why if you live in the forest you carry an axe as an EDC item. Normally Forest rangers would be clearing these roads and keeping them looking good but on XMAS its a different story.

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Not bad, right? Now this just went from a casual hike into an adventure and I had to see if I could even make it to the trailhead at all. (Meanwhile the fog rolls in).

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There were no other big obstacles along the way but I did end up clearing out fallen trees/branches along to way to help Subarus out a little should they be trying to follow me, but we did make it to the trailhead and had an incredible hike all to ourselves.

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I do have an incredible panoramic photo of this whole area up top but the file size is so big that I the forum server won't accept it.

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This was an amazing time, I absolutely have to go back here and explore it more because there was so much to see and not enough time. Till then, hope you guys enjoy the picture thread and happy holidays!