Wagons East! Naches Pass Trail 4×4 Run
Hosted by Eastern Washington Adventures
By Clay Graham / CegPics.com
This year we brought back the annual “Wagons East” run on the Historic Naches Pass Wagon Trail for Eastern Washington Adventures members. Two years before after this run we fell into some problems. Camping that night it was freezing cold. Some tent campers left in the middle of the night because of how cold it was. The water pipes frozen in my camper. There was a land slide across SR 410 early Sunday morning blocking us from heading toward Yakima. The people that lived in Eastern Washington that brought RVs and the ones that pulled trailers had to drive all the way to Enumclaw (Cayuse Pass was closed) and around to another pass to go home. Last year we did not hold this annual run since members had that bad camping experience.
Around 10 AM on October 15th, 2011 the people on the East side of the Cascades met up at intersection of NF19 and FS1914. We headed across Pyramid Pass and meet the people that live on the west side of the Cascades on FS70 at the Naches Trail.
We took a hike down to see the cliff where the Longmire Party lowered their wagons down in October 1853.
Once everyone was back at their vehicles we split into two groups. Ricky took a group of rigs around to the Naches Pass Trail at FS7080 for those who did not want to climb the hard part of the trail.
BlindPilot lead the rest of the group up Naches Pass Trail from the west end heading up hill toward the east.
The trail was a little tougher on a few of the rigs and Ricky’s group had to wait awhile at FS7080 for us. I stopped on the trail in a straight section since there was only one rig behind me. BlindPilot drove on to Ricky’s group. The CB in my rig quit working that morning so I had to get James’ (Shindigs) to call back to find out where everyone was. They said some rigs were still making the last hard hill climb. We waited to make sure everyone caught up before we moved on.
Meanwhile at FS7080 BlindPilot stopped another group to let them know we had a big group coming. There were members from the Cascade 4×4 of Tacoma in that group. I found that out when we finally got up to FS7080 and was given a bad time from a lady with a friendly smile. We moved on without stopping to get out of that groups way. Ricky’s group merged in and we all stopped at Government Meadows for a break.
We took a hike to the Government Meadows Cabin and had lunch.
A short time later we moved on down the trail. The top of the pass was not far. We did not stop at the Naches Pass sign because the size of or group.
We stopped after crossing FS1914 to regroup. Rubiclone was out riding his dirt bike and showed up as we were regrouping. Once we had all the rigs were accounted for, we moved on.
The last last part of the trail was tight and I broke off the passenger mirror on my brother’s XJ I was driving. A few others took some time to make it through that section.
At the end of the trail a lot of us headed to the Eastern Washington Adventures camp off of FS1906 to air up or load up for home. Most of the west side people headed back across Pyramid Pass to the west side.
This was a very fun run thanks to all who came.
Here are some pictures I took of our day:
