4W613 Louie Way Gap to Upper Meadow Work Party
Hosted by Eastern Washington Off Road for Yakima/Kittitas Forest Watch Association
Report and photos by Clay Graham / Eastern Washington Adventures
On Saturday June 26th, 2010 around 10 AM members of the Yakima/Kittitas Forest Watch Association met up at Nasty Creek Corrals to air down.
We drove the service Green Dot Roads to Louie Way Gap.
We headed on up 4W613.
Not to far up the trail we came across this log pile on the trail.
Crawl Mama finishing up.
We moved on up to the top of the first steep section.
Havo
Guido
TJ40
Dirty Bill
Craigen
Crawl Dad
We moved on up to the first view point.
My co-pilot “Bubz”.
Rimrock Lake and Mt. Rainier in the background.
Looking across Louie Way Gap at Jumpoff Lookout.
Test Dummy and Tiny joined us.
A small cut was needed here.
A light dead tree had to be moved.
We hit snow pretty low.
We found another tree across the trail.
A few cuts and the trail was clear.
We moved up the trail and found the snow drifts were getting big. We walked up the trail and saw the snow was real deep on the next off camber section. Here is looking back down where we stopped.
Turning around to head back down.
Waiting for the group at Louie Way Gap.
We took the Green Dot Road around to the Strobach Mountain Trail.
Heading through the area we take the kids sledding.
Nice view of the Yakima Valleys.
On up the Strobach Mountain Trail there was a lot of trash we picked up. I came across a new by-pass in a wet area because people were too lazy to move a small dead tree from the trail. As I was moving the tree two TJs used the by-pass to drive around me. We believe these are the people who made to by pass in the first place.
At 4W613 we had to stop to removed the signs to repaint them.
Moving up to the Strobach Mountain Vista.
Great view of Mt. Rainier and Rimrock.
Heading toward Dome Peak we found a real big tree down and a new by pass.
Looks like from the same two TJ’s since the fresh tire tracks stopped in the snow just up the trail.
Havo Winch the log off the trail after we got it cut.
The climb up to the Upper Meadow was covered with snow. I had to winch up the steep climb and then hit a stump climbing the boulders.
We stopped at the Upper Meadow to regroup.
Havo found his frame was broke.
Trail fix.
The log started walking.
Havo added some lag bolts to hold the log from sliding.
The rough trail down.
At the bottom of the steep climb Havo had to add a block since the log was still moving.
Stopping to check the trail fix.
Havo reset the block and we headed down to Nasty Creek Corrals to air up.
Once aired up Havo and I drove to Test Dummy’s house in Tampico to drop off his rig so he could go get his trailer.
This was a great work party run. A total of 153 volunteer hours were logged for the DNR on this day.
We will have to wait until the snow melts to clear the rest of the trail. We hope we do not find any more new by passes.
