September 24, 2011 - Finally an afternoon on the trails

We haven't done a lot in the last couple of months so on Saturday September 24, we decided to take the RZR up to Murphy Dome and see if we could find the trail down to Minto Flats.  The other two trails we had taken down from the dome led us to the Chatanika River and once you get there all you can do is turn around and go back up.

After lunch,  we loaded up and headed to Murphy Dome. 

 As the road slowly climbed up, it started snowing and by the time we reached the parking area there was a little snow sticking on the sides of the road.

We off-loaded the RZR and started down the trail we always go on then once we got about 5 miles out, we turned off to the left up over a hill and started down a trail.  First, I stopped to take a couple of pictures.  

The view out the window was pretty bad.

So I stepped out and snapped a couple of pictures but it was pretty cloudy so couldn't see much.  We started down that trail and noticed that it didn't appear to have been used much.  The trail was overgrown with small willows down the middle which made a lot of noise as we traveled over them.  We decided to turn around and see if we could find a different trail.

We saw some people coming up from below and once they got up to the top, we headed down the trail they had come from.  It was quite a bit better but about 2 miles out we came to a spot in the trail where the trees on both sides were so close together we couldn't fit through.  JW found us a way around that spot and we kept going down.  Finally we came to the end of that trail and there was no way to go further so we turned around and JW took over the driver's seat.

He headed back up to the top but then decided to take off on a different trail.  He made it through a lot of places where I felt like the trees were too close together to get through the trail.  We stopped in this area to look around a bit to see if we could find a way on through.

I decided I was going to walk a little ways over in this direction to see if I could see anything.  But, the tundra is really fun stuff to walk in.  With each step, you sink 6"-15" so it's kind of like walking on a nice soft sponge.

Some of the vegetation in the tundra is very strange looking.  The lighter green plant in the picture below had leaves with the consistency of cabbage leaves.

We got back in and drove a little further but it finally got so we couldn't make it down the trail nor could we find any place to go around and try to get back to the trail.  We were thinking "man, we should have brought a chain saw."

I just love the many colors of the tundra.

With nowhere else to go, we had to turn back around and head back up to the top.  About 2 1/2 miles back up the trail we could see the Minto Flats below us.  For today it was an unreachable destination but we'll get back out there again to try to find the way down.

We got back up to the truck and loaded the RZR onto the trailer.  By this time, the temperature had hit 33 degrees and although it wasn't still snowing, it was raining.

I jumped into the truck to keep out of the rain while JW tied down the RZR.

We drove back down Murphy Dome Road toward Goldstream.

Back in our neighborhood, it was just a short drive up the hill on the left to home.  It's always great to be home after we get out but sad to think that there aren't a lot of weekends left before winter's going to be here.