Winter activities and road conditions at Fall Creek Adventures.

One of my dreams is to have a big family Thanksgiving or Christmas celebration at my own mountain property/cabin, so I really wanted to test the road conditions around the Thanksgiving time frame to see what efforts would be required to pull that off, if and when, we build a cabin at Fall Creek Adventures.  So I took a quick trip close to that 3rd week in November to test the road conditions.  To my surprise and delight, the roads all the way to the property had been plowed!   I never found the official reason why, but some people I spoke with mentioned that they were plowing the roads for the logging trucks, and others thought that the roads were plowed during the hunting season.   I still don’t know if the roads will be plowed in November each year, but it was a nice surprise.   Given then amount of snow at that time, I still think I would have been able to reach the property in a 4×4 truck even if they had not plowed.

As a side note, my good friend Dustin brought his SXS with trax up in December, and the roads had also been plowed at that time.  Even though they drove the SXS to the property, he noted that because of the plowing, he felt confident that he could have reached the property by truck.   See more about his trip here. 

Overall, in my opinion, there will be no problem getting to the property in late part of November.  There was roughly a foot of snow on the ground at that time.

Fast forward to March 2023.   In Feb, I purchased a utility type of snowmobile so that I could have easy access to, and transport goods to the property during winter months.  I researched for several weeks and decided on the CanAm Expedition model snowmobile.  It’s a beautiful dual sport sled that offers the best of both worlds – two up riding with utility features, but still entirely capable of sport riding.  I had made an appointment to meet with the dealer to take a look at one they had available, when I came across a listing on craigslist for a Yamaha VK540V.  I didn’t know much about that model, but it had the features that I wanted, it was a 2 up sled with utility capabilities.  Most appealing though, was that it was a fraction of the cost of the CanAm, and came with a free trailer, so I decided on the used VK540, and so far I am glad I did.   The VK540 may lack some of the refinement, but it’s a proven design that has been tried an tested for over 30 years – its a workhorse that hopefully I’ll get a lot of use out of for many years to come.

I didnt take any before pictures of the trailer, but it was in pretty bad shape.  Bent fenders, rust, broken jack, broken lights, and worn out tires.  But it basically came free with the sled, so I decided to put a few bucks into it.   You can get glimpses of it from the pics above.

I replaced the tires, hubs, bearings, broken lights, added a front mud shield, and a cargo box.  I put a new jack on it, pounded out the dents as best as I could, and prepped it for paint.  I pressure washed it, painted the frame, and coated the bed with flex seal.  Final cost was about $600

Here’s a few pics after paint.  After these pictures were taken, I added the front shield and the cargo box.

Elena and I hit the road to put the new trailer, and new sled to the test!  I had some concerns about the sled, because it had been sitting for 2 years.   However, it was starting and running just fine, so I felt like we were in good shape.    So armed with an abundance of over confidence, and being mediocrely prepared, we set out for Fall Creek Adventures.   Right away we were met with a good learning experience.   Apparently there is a big difference between a snowmobile cover, and a snowmobile trailering cover.  Ours being the former, it departed from our sled approx. one mile after hitting the freeway.   There was no saving it.  To pour salt in that wound, middle fork rd was very muddy, so the trailer and sled were caked in mud.

Unfortunately, our day went from bad to worse.   As we made our way closer to the forest service road split, we were making good progress in 4 wheel drive, the road did have a good foot or two of snow, but wasn’t causing us much problem to power through.  At the 221/214 road split, there is a little area to park, and enough room to turn a trailer around, however, my over confidence got the best of me, and I made the ill-fated decision to continue on to the 214,  to try and get closer to the property.  I was hoping that we could get to an area wide enough to pull off the road, and even possibly turn around – what was I thinking?   We made it maybe a mile down the 214, and we got stuck.  Really stuck.  We were in a pickle.  The truck was stuck, the trailer was facing the wrong direction, and we were out in the middle of nowhere.  We disconnected the trailer, and after an hour of digging, (thanks to Elena), we managed to get the truck unstuck.  So we moved on to problem two – getting the trailer turned around.  Just then we noticed another truck headed our way on Fall Creek Rd.  We didn’t know it at the time, but it was Kevin and Margaret, (the new owners of LOT B), and they helped us get our trailer turned around in the right direction.  (A BIG THANK YOU TO KEVIN AND MARGARET).  Fortunately, a short time after, local residents Tiffany and Cody (I think his name was Cody) showed up in their SXS with trax, and with seemly little effort, was able to pull our trailer out, and the truck out.   Among the many lessons I learned that day, one of them was how awesome and capable a SXS with trax truly is.   I tried and tried to give Tiffany and Cody some money for their time and efforts helping us that day, but they would not accept.  It is a testament to the amazing and generous people that live in the Council area.  We were very grateful for all the help we received that day.  Elena and I started our trip off with a prayer, that we would be safe and have an enjoyable day.  Our prayers were answered.  How lucky we were to have not one, but two couples on that road that day that were able to help us.    And yes, after all was said and done, Elena and I had shared quite an adventure together, and with her turning 18 soon, not sure how many more of those we’ll get, so for me, despite the difficulties we had, it was an enjoyable day to be able to spend time with her.

Elena and I weren’t going to let that first bad experience get us down.  The very next weekend, we went for redemption.  Armed with a better game plan, and better prepared, we finally got to the property, and it was glorious.  We fixed one of our trail cameras, checked the others, and had lunch with a view.  We had a blast.

And as per tradition, we stopped at the Country Coffee Cabin in Midvale, for their amazing dinner specials.  Elena got the Saturday night special:  BBQ ribs.

This past weekend, we took the sled back up, this time with the whole family to do some sledding.  We had an absolute blast.  Starting on lot A, the kids would sled almost all the way down the hill to Lot B.  I would pick them up on the snowmobile so they could do it all over again.  The weather once again was just amazing, and the whole trip just reinforced in my mind how awesome it will be to have a cabin up there some day.  To be able to play like that up there, and not have to worry about driving home the same day, is going to be amazing.

Seeing winter sunsets like these more often, is definitely something I look forward to.

And, yes, of course he had to stop at the Country Coffee Cabin, as per tradition, for dinner.  Check out Zanders double bacon cheeseburger.