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In July, Lynde and I took a weekend and packed into the Scapegoat Wilderness. Since neither of us have a trailer, we were limited in our options of where to go. We left from the house, crossed the river, rode up a few miles, crossed back, and rode up to the North Fork Trailhead.
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| Just past North Fork Trailhead |
Lynde's dog, Simon, is an Australian Terrier. He loves the water, and has crossed the river numerous times on other rides. So we let him swim over and then back on the way up. But it is a long ways to where we camped, about 17 miles, and he was getting pretty tuckered out. In addition, his pads were getting pretty sore. In spite of all his running around and following us on day rides, it was more than he could do. I put him across my saddle, more or less in my lap, after we crossed the pack bridge about three miles above the trailhead.
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| Lynde and Simon |
From the trailhead we rode up to the North Fork cabin, where we took a lunch break. There was a chipmunk at the cabin that robbed some of our celery. In the photo, the boards with the big nails in them are to keep the local bears from tearing the door down to get into the cabin.
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| Lunch Stop | Photos Courtesy of Lynde |
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| Chipmunk Celery Thief | Photos Courtesy of Lynde |
Then up past the falls, where we camped for the night.
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| Camp |
Our goal was to make a loop, crossing the North Fork, riding up the East Fork, then up over Windy Pass, and back down to the North Fork Trailhead road. I had been over most of this, but the section from the East Fork up over Windy Pass was unknown to me. It doesn't get a lot of traffic, and I have always heard it has a lot of downed timber. We carried the big crosscut saw to cut out anything we couldn't ride over or around.
In the morning we headed out, crossed the North Fork, and had a beautiful ride up the East Fork. Simon swam the North Fork ok, but had trouble on one of the side streams. He got washed downstream and ended up against a log on the bank, unable to get out. Fortunately, I was concerned about that happening and I jumped off and pulled him out.
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| Lynde up the East Fork |
We got to the cutoff trail that connected with the trail up to Windy Pass, and started up it. We started encountering downed timber, but managed to ride over or around most of it. But it soon looked like we were going to have a problem. Lynde had to be at work the next day. We had about six miles to go, mostly through dead timber, and then another 15 or so back to the house. I figured it took 15 min or so to cut a log, plus unpacking the saw and repacking. We didn't have enough time if we had to cut out many logs. So we turned around and retraced out steps, riding back to camp and all the way home. Simon had another swimming problem crossing the North Fork on the way back, but we rescued him ok. I carried him across the last two crossings, which were much wider and more difficult. It was a long day; Lynde says Simon didn't recover until Thursday...
This page last updated on 2013-10-23.
