A Canadian Hillbilly and his travels

So, I started to tear the truck down, as with winter hitting, I wanted to get back up on my maintenance. And supercharger. Gears. Replace the body. Build the Ute box. All the stuff!! But I got a call from some really good people, who wanted to run into ruby falls! What could I do, but put the truck back together and roll out?!!

 

Personally, I hate driving BFG KM2’s on a snowy, icy road. And we had several hundred KM of road to travel to the trailhead. So I packed my 4 KM2’s into the box of the truck, along with my impact, floor jack, and torque wrench, as I knew I’d want the big tires when we got to ruby. We got in as far as we could, before stopping, swapping tires, airing down, and unsticking everyone. Once we were all free, we pulled into the staging area, set up camp, got the fire going, and enjoyed some beers.

 

When we awoke Saturday morning, it started to snow. And snow hard. I aired down to 3psi, Kyle, Vill, and Ryan all aired down a bit less than me, and Kevin and Alex chained up. Both were on smaller than ideal tires for the deep snow.

 

It snowed

 

And it snowed

 

And it snowed more. I Fkn love it when it snows like this

 

Being a Canadian, in Alberta, we usually wind up with 6-7 months of winter. This years was particularly nasty, just last week, it was -20 Celsius, and we got snow. Spring finally showed up this week.

Saying that, when faced with this, how do you not love snow????? In snow like this, with my 35” tires at 3psi, I was doing a solid 35-40kph, 25ish mph, just floating!! It’s the best feeling!!

 

Kyle with his tundra catching up.

 

We made it thru the cutline, amd hit the main creek trail, really enjoying the deep, fresh snow!!

 

Find a used Pentax DSLR. They'll be cheap and weather resistant along with most of their lenses. I can dip my K1 in a lake, take it out and start taking photos again. A lot of people do this when they're shooting near the ocean and get some salt water on it - just hose it down with fresh water and you're good to go again. They're also cold, dust, oil resistant.

 

Awesome!! Thank you!

 

Heading further in, the snow was on and off. Conditions were amazing, warm, but not melting. But the ice over the creek was thin, and not capable of supporting the weight of the trucks.

 

Along with your local buy and sell forums (Craigslist or Kijiji) I would check out pentaxforums - https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/24-photographic-equipment-sale/ - really good resource for all things Pentax, not just sales. They have tons of lens reviews and news etc.

 

With a creek crossing and ice shelves, my muffler decided to part ways with the truck. We parked it on a side hill, so we could remove it. Man, with the exhaust gone, the power was INSANE!!!! (Not really, but the high school senior in me sure loved the blatting of it)

 

With everyone thru the worst yet crossing, we carried on towards the falls.

 

Remember the mention of thin ice? Well, I found it!! I knew I had a good chance of falling thru here, so I was on low and creeping forward, when the passenger side dropped thru.

 

With a light pull on a winchline, from @GeoScout and the tredpros, I backed out of the hole.

 

Found a spot where the ice was sufficiently thick, and the creek shallow enough, to cross, but needed the hook to top the bank.

 

We kept on plugging away at the trail. But we were at 5 hours to make it to a place that should’ve taken 30-40 minutes in the summer, or 1-1/2 to 2 hours in most winter conditions.

 

Vil, aka @GeoScout burying his 35” tires.