Under the full moon
Updated: Jun 7, 2020
I’ve been travelling between Auburn, CA the Adventure Capital of the world and notably the home base for Mega-Mikes Adventure Products and the High Sierra's near the Kirkwood area recently. So I thought for a change I'd be adventurous (sure) and take a more indirect route.
Holy Moley I had no idea where I was. I did have a full tank of gas, grocery’s, a pretty good set up Jeep - survival supplies.
But no one knew where I was or even headed? (readers please don't follow that bad example).
The trail started out quite serine with nice mix of reasonable paved and graded gravel roads. groomed then turned into getting real narrow and then it got dark - but with a mega bright orange full moon. It was eerie. It was scary and awesome all together on the top of what appeared to be a forest on top of the world- trails, switchbacks, downhill and back up, with a shit load of obstacles!
I luckily got to use my trusty KC HiLiTes hood mounted LED lite bar for at least 90% of the off road sections (plug - we are a dealer for KC just to let ya know).
Even with excellent illumination I was worried I would lose GPS signal - but it held. I crossed a ford and a couple of wash-outs, dodged what seemed like a thousand fallen broken limbs and downed trees (cleared by the forestry service - nice guys)
Get this, I had the window down and could hear music or something - then two f*cking big cows ran across the trail right in front of me - I hit the brakes and missed ‘em by about 10 ft. They had cow bells around their necks. It scared the living shit out of me. That’s the only living thing I saw on the whole trail except for a couple of deer I spooked early in the trip. Just me in a JK and the full moon with musical cows as a soundtrack
The trail did have Forrest road signage about every 5 miles or so - no mileage posted, just arrow directions where to go next.
Finally after a couple of hours I surfaced straight out onto a highway just 10 miles from the chalet (my final destination) What a freaking trip!
Would I do it again - damn right I’d do it again, but this time during the day time, just to see what I missed in the dark and where I had been. Also with someone else and a camera.
Written and driven by Another Brigg - just another mega-mike adventurer ….. Come join the tribe and do some of this stuff with us!