Campfire Tails

JL Rockies

Binders Fulla Expo
Location
Draper
Meat invited me to go out to AF Canyon with he and Trever (don't know his RME SN) to have a campfire and hang out. The plan was to drive up to the start of Mineral Basin and pull into one of the campsites and talk dude stuff around a fire.

I noticed on the way up there that the little stream that runs along the road was more like a raging river, I had never seen it that high or that angry... it was kinda cool to see though. At one point, there was a lot of water on the road and a chunk missing from the stream-side edge; it was no big deal to drive around it. As we got closer to Mineral Basin, we had to stop because there was a massive section of the road missing and the river runs through it. It was the end of the road literally so we pulled off at the campsite that was right there and did our thing. There was rain in the area and we set up with distant lightning in the sky.

Around 12:30ish we packed it in and left. I noticed that the water on the road seemed deeper than on the way in. When we reached the part of the road with the chunk missing, I noticed that the chunk was now a deep trench that stretched across 3/4 of the road with copious amounts of water flowing through it. I tried to go high but my schizzley balding tires could not grip and I slid into the trench with my bumper resting on the road and my DS rear tire up in the air. I grabbed my tree strap and winched myself out of the hole and with lessons learned from my crossing attempt, we were able to winch Trever's Ranger across with much less drama.

There are campers on the wrong side of this hole who own a Subaru wagon. When Meat went to warn them that they are stranded because the road is impassible to their vehicle, their response was "well, we have enough food for a month so we're OK". :confused:


I do have pics which I will post up soon. This road is going to need some serious repair.
 

SAMI

Formerly Beardy McGee
Location
SLC, UT
That was a big buildup for no pictures of off camber middle of river winching in a down pour.. I have to ask, did you mean 'tales' in the title?

Anyways.. Waiting on pics. I wonder how long until the water levels calm down?
 

Bear T

Tacoma free since '93
Location
Boulder, mt
You didn't happen to get GPS coordinates of where the trail was washed out did you? We are heading up on the 20th to do some recon and prep work for NPLD.
 

JL Rockies

Binders Fulla Expo
Location
Draper
That was a big buildup for no pictures of off camber middle of river winching in a down pour.. I have to ask, did you mean 'tales' in the title?

Anyways.. Waiting on pics. I wonder how long until the water levels calm down?

No... I actually meant trails.... so I am a very different kind of retarded than you were thinking.
 

JL Rockies

Binders Fulla Expo
Location
Draper
You didn't happen to get GPS coordinates of where the trail was washed out did you? We are heading up on the 20th to do some recon and prep work for NPLD.

No GPS but you really can't miss it! The really big hole that ended our forward progress was sorta-kinda close to the start of the rock garden I believe. It was very dark so I don't have much to go on except it's definitely beyond the Forest Lake trail head and that area where we loaded up fences before going out to locations on NPLD 09.

Meat had asked me if I had ever been up Mineral Basin and when I told him only to the start of the rock garded he pointed and said "that starts just over there"

The hole I got stuck in I coulda got out of if I had a rear locker and the hole that stopped us on the way in coulda been crossed with 35's and maybe a snorkel :rofl:

If the little hole got that much worse on us in a few hours I can imagine the bigger one that stopped us probably did too since there was much more water cutting through it.

Maybe in the daylight and without the raging river these holes won't look so bad but at the time, I had to adopt a "no effing way" posture.

On the news this AM they were doing a story about Cottonwood Creek overflowing and they were sand-bagging the banks. They mentioned that it crested at 12:30 AM which is about the same time we were trying to leave so I imagine that the hole I got stuck in didn't get any worse (assuming this stream crested at the same time)since then but who knows?
 
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JL Rockies

Binders Fulla Expo
Location
Draper

I got home at 3 AM on a school night so I just went to sleep. After work, I will get them off my camera. Keep in mind that it was night so the level of detail may be suspect. I lit up the area the best I could and used the flash but it all looked like darkness on the little screen. I'll see what I can punch up, I think I got bigfoot off in the distance on one of them
 

Talon

Member
Was a good time sorry for the lack of pic on my end. Thanks again for pulling my little ranger across.
 

SAMI

Formerly Beardy McGee
Location
SLC, UT
I'd rock an older Kia Sorento.. Those were some stout little rigs.. With v6's.. And I'd stock it with Scope, Crest, and other known gingivitis fighting chemicals, tools, and paraphernalia. I'd hope that - at the very least would keep you-know-who away. ;)
 

JL Rockies

Binders Fulla Expo
Location
Draper
As I feared, most of the pics I took just look like dark on dark with little blue orbs (rain).

Here's two that came out a'ight :


The new end of the road until further notice

DSCF1251.jpg


This used to be a flat road

DSCF1255.jpg


Meat e-mailed me some more photos, I'll look to see if they look any better than mine when I get home.
 

rholbrook

Well-Known Member
Location
Kaysville, Ut
The only bad part of this is the fun stops when all parties are out. Actually, I take that back, the bad part of this is AF will close the road until they get time to fix it.
 

JL Rockies

Binders Fulla Expo
Location
Draper
The only bad part of this is the fun stops when all parties are out. Actually, I take that back, the bad part of this is AF will close the road until they get time to fix it.

Yeah... the good part about the snow melting is the trails can open.... the bad part is the road is getting wrecked so they're gonna have to close it.... whack.
 

cruiseroutfit

Cruizah!
Moderator
Vendor
Location
Sandy, Ut
There are 3 notable washouts, the first one has been filled with some large logs and someone built a diverter wall out of rocks to move most of the water out of the road. The second is in the exact spot it washed out last year, this one isn't quite as bad as last year however. Now the 3rd is an absolute mess. Its ~4' deep in a channel ~6' wide, blowing right around the 3' culvert that seems to be partially clogged. The entire area is just a pool in front of the channel. Above the channel it isn't that deep and could be crossed but through the middle would sink you fast and slam you up against the guardrail :eek:
 
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