On the trail:

CJ5	Bruce, Ashley, Jaimee,Sophia
CJ7	Mike, April
CJ5	Kevin, Dayna and Olivia

On Saturday September 8 we were off to a late start as we left Langley around 3:00pm.

Our plan was a simple one:

• Arrive at the trail head at 4:30 Twenty minutes to the bottom of the trail and Arrive at the beach by 5:30pm.
• An hour of swimming at the beach
• back to the top of the trail by 7:00pm - home by 8:00pm

We stopped for the usual stuff; gas and Subway subs and finally arrived at the Jeep trail at 4:30pm. The ride down was fun and uneventful. We got hung up a couple of times and inched our way around trees. The bottom half of the trail was over-grown and was a bushwack to the lake.

The Fish ....I mean kids jumped into the Lake as we opened a beer and talked to the "Boat people" that frequented the beach. To the kids disappointment it had to be a short swim because it was now 5:30pm and we knew there was a lot of Fun/work ahead to get out.

 

No problem we thought, It was 6:15pm and we are at the start of the trail it would be dark by the time we got to the top, but we could still get home at a decent hour. WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!

It had been raining the day before and the trail was slick and muddy. The ground consisted of rotting trees and leaves that fill up your tires and leave you spinning your tires. I'm locked front and back and it still made for an extremely slow climb. Every few feet we would have to get the winches out and hook them up with snatch blocks, tug straps, and clevises. What made it worse was that Mike sold his Winch a few days before so there was a lot of tugging and time spent setting up the snatch blocks to pull him from the rear Jeep up the hill.

Around 12:00am and only half way up the trail Bruce rips out the sidewall on his rear BFG mudtire and breaks a valve stem on the front tire. by this point we were discussing whether to camp there and carry on at first light. If we didn't have the kids with us and some camping gear we might have elected to stay. Under light of dim flashlights Bruce changes his spare and used Mikes spare for the front, and we were on our way again at our very slow accent.

--------Insert sweat - grunting- hill climbing- winching ------------

 

Long story short we near the top of the hill and the sun is coming up. The last 50 feet and Mike is in the lead. He took a run at the last obstacle and BANG! BANG! Whooosh! He jumps out to inspect the damage and discovers he has ripped off his front left fender and his tire has a 5" cut in the sidewall. Out comes the winch again and we set up for the last winch, snatch block, tug strap , pull. Luckily I mounted my spare a few days earlier and after letting out some air in my 35" tire to balance with his 33" tire we were ready for the drive home.

I arrive home and jump into bed just in time for the neighbour to wake up and start mowing his lawn!

I have to say the kids through this sleepless night were incredible; not one complaint, well except for my singing, and were helpful with manning the flashlights! In fact Dayna only had words of encouragement! A treat to have along and like I have been saying "some of the best kids on the planet!"

When I tell this story people would say "oh how awful". Maybe I tell it wrong because it was actually a lot of fun. It could have been a bit shorter but we were having FUNINBC!