Red Eye Run Nov 2007

November 9th – 11th. Yup–yet another red eye run has come and past.

Friday

As always–we all met at the Enumclaw Safeway around 7pm Friday night. As it has a few times in the past it was raining right off the bat. So we headed for the trail. We all arrived I think around 9pm, aired down, and headed out with the rain still coming down. Unlike the past couple of years there was not a bit of snow, but it was cold and the ground was slimy, which made for some fun on the number of steep climbs and down hills we hit from end to end. The trek over Friday night was uneventful except for one blown bead, and with the rain stopping and starting along the way. We finally arrived at the camp site off Little Naches road around 1pm (with 2 more rigs trying to play catch-up who got a late start and finally showed around 3am). So we got our tents all up in the rain and off to bed we went..

Saturday

We woke up with a nice bright sun, but some time during the night the temps dropped below freezing and everything froze up. So we loaded up and headed for Kanar. At this point the ground was slick and at times icy. The first open hill climb was no problem for me and a few others, but a few others had to take a couple tries at the hill. We didn’t hit any snags till we got to the spot that was pretty tore up (meadow with the large mud hole and many routes up the hill). The only doable line was a bump up, bump up, with a good off camber corner. I was the only one to make it, with Shane getting his nose up the first bump and then pulling cable. All the Jeeps had to pull cable up the first two bumps. So we made our way up to the second hill climb, which I hit pretty hard and only made it up about 1/4 of the way, followed by quick slide back down. Ya, that’s not going to happen. At this point the temps had dropped some more and the ground was frozen, so we took the line up the right. It was no problem, but a lil spooky at the top when you have to side hill a bit while over looking the top of the first big hill. We were able to make it all the way to the top of the ridge before it got dark, and along the way a rig had lost a couple beads. So down Shoestring we went. I was surprised as I thought the first downhill would have been slick since there was a dusting of snow and the ground was frozen. From here we just putted along heading towards Riders camp in buck Meadows to setup camp, but we got to region 4 Meadows around 5 and decided to go ahead and setup camp there instead. Got everything setup, made dinner, and we got a good fire going. I think everybody was in there tents by 9 and out cold. Well it was VERY cold by this time. All you would hear from anybody who walked away from the fire was “Damn its cold”.

Sunday

Well at some point during the night it snowed a little bit. So we packed up and were off again, this time with everything frozen and a nice light dusting of snow which made for some of the best traction I have ever seen. We made our way to funny rocks where we played around for a while, and  then deiced to head out. So we made our way back onto the ridge, and headed down what I have known as the woodpecker (parallels 3 finger), and down to the road (goes from 410-top). We buzzed down the road and instead of jumping onto 410 (lil Naches River Road), we took a trail that goes from mill pond over to the road we took to hit Kanar, and has a fun set of down hills that were very slimy but fun. So at this point we got back onto the lil Naches River Road and headed up towards the Naches trail. We we hit the trail again where it crosses over the road on the east side for the last time. On the way up we had a fresh cover of snow, but the big hill was not a problem. I even went up a gear and blasted up it, what a hoot. So we just made our way down the tail and decided to go all the way to the begining. 3 of us had made it to the end and were waiting for the others when we had heard Jessie had ran out of fuel. He he was able to dump some in, but then we heard that Dan had once again flopped his Jeep. So we waited for him to put it rubber side down and catch up. Anybody who knows Dan knows that you couldn’t tell he flopped. When Jessie caught up again he realized his oil pressure line had broken, so he got a free tow back to the tow rigs.

So–it wasn’t a crazy run this year but as always—a fun one.

Mike