Roads Near Okay Mountain and Okay Lake

I've been thinking back to when I went out to explore the roads around Okay Lake and the NE side of the Okay Mountain Valley and returned home with a loose GPS battery and a massive grey cloud over my head.  Well I headed back out there again this evening after work and had a terrific short ride.

I entered through the Doumont Trail, turned left towards Boomerang Lake and started my track at the next intersection, (what I call "Intersection B").  Here's the track on Google Earth:

Below:  A YouTube video retracing the route.  I hope it's visible here...  You might need to bring it up full screen and crank the res. up to 720p. 

 

I made a stop in at Okay Lake to snap off a photo.  You can see from the yellow track above that the road in towards the lake now extends further around the south side of the lake.  Lots of active logging in this area.

  

 All those stretches of roads running N to S are in great shape and it's possible to maintain speeds well over 50km/h for most of it.  I must have seen no less than twenty elk in three separate herds today.  The crazy things take off so quickly that it's near impossible to have a camera ready in time to snap off a photo.  At one point, I came around a corner to find them blocking the road and damned nearly joined the herd as they clattered into the bush.  Fantastic head rush!  Here are a few of the ladies off the road.

I encountered this "bridge out" while heading south.  You can see the location on the YouTube movie above:  The arrow, (which acts like a house fly walking on your lunch), stops and turns around on the southern facing stretch after encountering the missing bridge.  I return to the same spot heading north after taking a detour south on the usual road that skirts Okay Mt.

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Ahhhh, the view from the other side after attacking it from the south.

Really nice creek view where the bridge used to span across.

There, a nice big truck to offset the beautiful creek.

   

Wow... Logged Out.  These people need to smarten up and change their messed-up logging methods.  :( 

Terrific local road to do again... really liked it.

GPX track file 
KMZ track file

Didn't Get the Jump on Jump Lake!

Had a terrific ride with Paul on Saturday.  We headed out to see if we could get to Jump Lake, one of Nanaimo's watershed lakes.  The route looked plain enough; through the traps, follow the logging road that runs the base of Blackjack Ridge, a short spell on Nanaimo Lakes Road and then follow a short route in behind (south of) Gemini and Green Mountains.  It was good in theory... then we ran into the locked "Nanaimo Water Shed District" gate shortly after we crossed the Nanaimo River.

The locked gate at Nanaimo's Watershed District.  Paul's trying out his new helmet, goggles and a fancy Swann digital movie camera.  Nice gear!

 

Looking east from the bridge crossing the Nanaimo River.  There were a couple of guys panning for gold off the other side. 

What now?  We were well on our way to the Nanaimo Lakes and we both had our fishing gear, so off we went to Fourth Lake to try our luck.  We were stopped at the entry gate by some little man masquerading as Hitler who demanded $2 entry to the lakes!  Didn't get that the last time we went through.  Just lucky the last time I guess since Hitler maintained that people always pay at the gate.

The ride to Fourth Lake was great.  Lots of dust out there already.  It was really interesting to have a quick look at the entry road to the gold mine on Mt. DeCosmos, an upcoming summer ride.  That's a big mountain as far as local mountains go and it looks quite intimidating from the Nanaimo Lakes Rd. side of the mountain.  The logging road that leads to the summit skirts around its edge and climbs up a much milder looking NW side.  

We hit snow at the final turn off that leads to Fourth Lake so we parked a short distance from the dam and walked up the rear slope.  Terrific day for fishing.  Beautifully clear up there; a bit breezy but comfortable sitting on the dam catching its radiant heat.

Panoramic (180 degree) down the length of the dam

 

The lake's water level was much higher than it was during our earlier visit in the fall.

 We didn't catch anything here and decided to continue with our ride with a stop off at Boomerang Lake to see if we might get something.

Boomerang Lake 

I fished at the usual spot directly forward of the trail that leads in and Paul fished off to the right.  I got skunked and Paul caught two small trout. 

I packed my Garmin's battery housing with memory foam for this ride.  It worked well and I didn't see anything of the bothersome cutting-out and rebooting that had driven me close to insanity on my previous two rides.  I was pretty pleased that the unit had stayed on for the entire trip while recording the entire ride.  That's going to work better in the bush!

Great ride!  It's really nice to get back out there with Paul after the winter hiatus.

Okay Mountain... FAIL!

Tried to get up Okay Mountain again today.  This is one of four rides that I'm really keen to get at this summer, but it's too early yet...  I was skunked once again by fairly deep snow and a downed log.  I'm sure that it would be easy to get over that pesky log if it weren't for the snow around it!  Also, I heard a strange sound after stopping at the log that I could have sworn was a cougar...  Anyway, it spooked the shit out of me!  I revved the engine half a dozen times quite loudly to make as much noise as I could before turning back.  It was pretty clear that today's ride was going to be on more familiar roads.  I decided at one point to explore a few spur roads.  My Garmin decided to start turning off repeatedly once I got deep into unknown territory and ruined the fun completely.  Nothing like having an expensive tool that gets you deep into the woods and then decides to pack it in, expecting you to find your own way out.  Thanks Garmin!  I managed to find my own way back, but my sense of direction has never been that good.  I rely heavily on that GPS!

I recopied Garmin's firmware into my GPS and it stopped the constant turning off, but I'm not happy.  How can I trust a GPS that won't show you the way.  They get another chance and then I go to work getting a refund while producing "Garmin Sucks" YouTube videos .

Here's another nasty video of the Tank Traps section of Doumont Road, (real time).  This is the way heading out of our local logging roads.  Very bumpy!  The video actually makes me a bit motion sick because of the jumping about.  I think I need to body mount this camera somehow...  Right now it's in a bumbag around the headlight.

It POURED coming home and so I decided to give the bike a quick spray at the local car wash and spent ten minutes watching the rain come down in stair rods.  After deciding it wasn't stopping any time soon, I finally bit the bullet and rode home.  I've got stuff hanging up to dry everywhere.  :)

Fun ride, but I'm pretty cheesed off with Garmin!