Labor Day Weekend

Jaime and I realized our weekends to go camping are running out fast. For Labor Day weekend we decided to make another trip out to Naches to go dirtbiking/camping. As soon as Jaime got off work, Kevin met up with us and the three of us headed out. For a holiday weekend, there weren’t as many campers out as I has expected. We really wanted a site on the river so we went down some very untraveled 4x4 trails in search of the perfect hidden campsite. We found a really good one, but it was about ¼ mile past a NO MOTORIZED VEHICLES sign.
Usually this wouldn’t have scared us that much, but since it was “Labor Day Weekend”, we knew that there was a high probability of Forest Rangers coming around and messing with us. So to avoid an unnecessary fine, we decided to keep hunting. As we turned around in the tight trail, we added a pretty good sized dent to the truck... Oops. Good thing we’re selling it soon. We were running out a daylight real fast so luckily the next site we found was perfect, away from the roads and right next to a big creek. We wasted no time setting up camp and getting a fire going. Once it got dark, we realized we had NO firewood. So the three of us piled in the truck (which only has 2 bucket seats, so I was crammed in-between the boys) and headed up the mountain with the chainsaw to get some good firewood. We didn’t have to go far, but we did anyways cause it was a lot of fun driving around in the pitch black with all the millions of bright stars and startled elk along the roads. Even after we got enough wood, we were having so much fun driving around we just kept going up and up the mountains until the road just came to an end at about 5000 feet. But oh no, Jaime still wasn’t done. He insisted on doing some “real 4x4ing.” So we found a good muddy 4x4 trail and started up it. It was VERY slippery and I started to get pretty scared that we could get stuck. It was about 12:30am and we had NO cell phone service and were about 7 miles from our campsite, and 15 miles from any services. Surprisingly, we only had one scare and Kevin and Jaime were able to maneuver the truck perfectly to keep us from sliding down a steep ravine.
The next day, we went for the ride of a lifetime. We were determined to make it to Ravens Roost, which we had done before, but from a different trail. This trail was INSANE! It was just a never ending hill climb, and a very steep slippery hill climb at that. It was a total of 3100 foot elevation gain. At one point Jaime spun out and crashed which caused Kevin to stop in the middle of a hill which caused me to have to stop where it was very steep. My bike slipped out from underneath me and pinned my leg between it and a big nasty rock and root. Then it started sliding down the hill with me underneath it. Very painful. As we get higher and higher, we gets windy and rainy, and then it started SNOWING.I could not believe it. Snow in August? Once it started snowing, we still had a good 30-45 minutes of riding to get to the top. Finally we made it to the top of Ravens Roost! (6100 Ft)It was so cold and so windy, we could hardly see anything. Ice chunks were blowing off the radio towers and the snow was blowing horizontal. We parked our bikes and huddled next to the radio tower buildings to block some of the wind until the harsh weather passed. After a while it stopped and visibility was much better and we were able to take some pictures and even got brief cell phone service. On the way back down, the weather got very bad again. We had to stop every mile or so just to warm our numb hands on our exhaust pipes. I half expected to take my gloves off and see frost bitten black fingers. But luckily that wasn’t the case. When we got back down to camp, I wasted no time getting a fire started. Once I got it blazing and starts to feel my fingers again, an unfamiliar car pulled into our campsite. Much to my surprise, it was Aaron, Brent, Andra, Dad, and Dustin. They’d come to hang out with us for a few hours and brought a much appreciated bucket of cheese puffs.We hiked around our campsite for a while and found some amazing trees that had been chewed by huge beavers. Lots of the trees had fallen down over the creek, but some were left half chewed and looked like they could fall with a good hard push or gust of wind. We shot some guns, ate food, rode the bikes around the campsite, and talked around the campfire for a few hours and then they headed back towards civilization. That night we crashed pretty early because we were all pretty exhausted from the intimidating ride.
On Sunday morning, we got up feeling very sore and just loafed around the campsite staying warm by the fire. The weather was very chilly for this time of year so we didn’t venture very far from the warm flames. It even started raining a bit and that encouraged us to pack up and get ready to head home.
Damion’s family came into town late Sunday night. This is the first time all 7 Hinckley’s have been all together since probably 2005. So it was very nice to all be together. We snapped a few quick pictures before everyone went off to bed.
On Labor Day, we all slept in pretty late so we got a late start on our adventure. We headed up FS Road 70 out past Greenwater to hike a couple mile stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail to a 3 mile stretch of forest that was burned back in 1988.

It was hard hiking because it has been so long since I’d been on a real hike AND my body was still very sore from riding on Saturday. But we finally got there and it was cooler than I expected. Miles of white trees burned decades ago and are still standing. We hung out for a while and watched some chipmunks and enjoyed pretty views. We even ran into some “thru hikers” who were in the middle of their hike from Mexico to Canada! Those people are crazy!!! The ones we ran into had been hiking since April 1st! That’s a whole lot of hiking. After our hike, we came back to my parent’s for a nice Labor Day BBQ and some more family pictures.
This weekend went by way too fast. Sometimes I wish life was a never-ending weekend.