A little 4-wheeling on McKay Trail

Earlier in May, we tried to get up the Quartz Trail at Nome Creek near Davidson Ditch but too much snow brought that idea to a quick halt.  On June 3, we decided to try again.  Before we left, John decided to put our lunch stuff and everything else into a big waterproof bag to protect it from any mud we may run into as it has been raining quite a bit up here.

As we headed up the Steese Highway past the turn off to Fort Knox and past Chatanika, John asked if I wanted to go to McKay Trail instead of Nome Creek and that was fine with me.  We stopped at the McKay Trailhead and off-loaded the Polaris to drive up the trail.  We weren't sure where it would go except we knew that it would be somewhere in the White Mountain area.

Around 8 miles up the trail, we came across this sign - 10 miles to Nome Creek so we decided to go ahead and see if we could make it that far.  And then possibly go to Cache Mountain Cabin - we'll see.

The trail was quite rough - washed out and torn up in many spots.  There were some places that people had made a new trail "around" a bad spot in the regular trail but the detour was worse than the regular trail.

We went through a number of very muddy places on the trail and it was getting worse so we stopped to walk a ways and see if it was going to get any better.  We did not want to get too stuck.

Good thing John put our lunch in that yellow bag on back of the polaris or we might have had to eat a little mud with our sandwich.

There was just a lot of water everywhere so we decided to go ahead and eat lunch then turn around to try a different direction.

We sat in the Polaris to eat lunch just to get away from the mosquitoes.  Fortunately, it was a nice cool day.  After we ate, we started on the trail back.  We didn't get very far before we had the RZR buried up to the bottom of the doors.  I opened my door then quickly shut it because the water started running in and there was already enough coming in through the floor.

John got out and climbed up on the front of the RZR so he could get the tow ropes out of the storage compartment.  He then chained them together and found a green tree that he could tie to so I could winch it out.

It was a bit difficult to find a green tree as most of them in this area have been involved in a forest fire and with shallow roots, they are of no value to tie off to.  As soon as he got us tied off, it was simple to winch out of the mess we were in.

It would have been nice to go further on the trail but as wet and swampy as it was, it might be one of the trails through the tundra that is best to traverse when it is frozen.  So for us, it was time to go on back to the truck and head for home.  We'll try again in late June / early July to get out Quartz Trail and see the Dall Sheep.  There are just too many work days and not enough weekends in the summer - it will be gone before we know it.