Wenas/Naches Father's Day 4 Wheeling Run
By Clay Graham
On June 18th, 2011 we met up at
Eastern Washington Adventures in Selah Washington for the
Yakima/Kittitas Forest Watch Association's Father's Day Run. The plan was to go on some backroads around the Wenas Area and to check out the views from Clemen Mountain. We convoyed to the end of North Wenas Road and aired down. Next we headed up Maloy Road to find a locked gate across the Green Dot Road. Well that killed the original plans we had.
Plan "B"! We ran Hog Ranch Road up to FS1701 and then ran FS1701 up to the 4W694 Trail Head. We stopped for lunch at the 4W694 Trail Head and let the kids play.
After lunch we headed across the top of Manastash Ridge running trail 4W694 through dust, mud, water and snow. We stopped along the way to take in the view over Manastash Lake. It was very cold at the view point so we did not stay very long. We headed over to Funny Rocks. The snow was deep where the trail dropped down in the trees around Funny Rocks. I broke trail through that area since I was driving my Brother's James Bond XJ. That was a lot of fun. We knew we would not get back up that section without winching but did not plan to back track 4W694. Nevada got stuck coming out the bottom since his rig was not set up to snow wheel. Remember this was planned as backroads run. Waycrazy drove back down to help Nevada and he got stuck. Guido helped Waycrazy get out and going again.
Once everyone was through the snow at Funny Rocks, we headed on toward Moon Rocks. Well we never made it to Moon Rocks because of snow on an off camber section right before Moon Rocks. We could not stay up on the trail. Not to cause resource damage by sliding off the trail, we turned around to back track back to FS1701.
Back at Funny Rocks we came into the problem of how we were going to get back up to the top of the rocks. I got stuck in the snow trying the easy line up Funny Rocks. Fatboy pulled me out as Guido lead the way around the rocks on the other side. The trail Guido took had a section we had to rock crawl. Nevada gave us a good show with his open diff rig. Waycrazy gave him a pull up and we were moving again.
Once everyone was on top of Funny Rocks, we headed backtracking 4W694 and then dropped down 4W670 to FS1701. Somehow TJ40 lost a bead coming down the hill. As TJ40 fixed his tire, we added air to ours. The kids got to play with each other one last time before we headed down FS1701. We took FS1701 down to Hwy410 and headed home.
This was a great Father's Day Run thanks to who all came.
Click here for the full report with 70 pictures!
Enjoy!
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