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Four Freelanders and a Disco- 30 October, 2004
By MuddyOval member Joe
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Four
Freelanders and a Disco |
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The Wharton State Forest, New Jersey,
USA |
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| Arriving at the Atsion ranger station I
discovered Dan (DII) and Phil (FL) already waiting for me.
Dan had already been out plying the sandy trails and had managed
one stuck/self recovery. He also reported that some access had been cut-off by
bulldozed sand burms. Apparently the Rangers are getting tired of
recovering people, were worried that “normal” folk might get stuck
trying to access the interior of the park, or worst of all had decided
that there had been too much trail damage.
Brushing those thoughts aside we checked over each others rigs and
waited for any other arrivals. A
few moments wait brought Eric and Sai onto the scene and off we went to
visit Apple Pie Hill and the fire tower residing there. |
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Arriving at the tower we saw that access to the
top was restricted but we could nonetheless climb the stairs nearly to the
top. The view out over the
Pinelands is normally impressive but clouds limited the view that day.
I aired down my tires (made quicker by borrowing Dan’s speed
deflator) and we were off to the spot that had earlier posed problems for
Dan’s Disco! Now it should
be said that the Pinelands vary dramatically with the weather.
There are well over a trillion gallons of ancient glacial melt
water just under the surface of the earth in this part of central New
Jersey and while the soil is very sandy it doesn’t drain well because
the water table is so high. The
upshot of this is that when it rains or has been raining, normally
unimpressive puddles can become daunting quagmires.
To make matters worse the bottom of these places can vary from
steady to “quicksand” to
“whalesh*t”, the latter being a silty mud that provides little
purchase for mud tires and has a nasty tendency to simply suck your
vehicle down. Needless to say
it helps to have a general idea of what you’re dealing with. |
| In the case of our first challenge we were faced
with a triumvirate of water holes overfilled by recent rains.
Dan advised a conservative line and one by one the hippos filed
into the wallow. The entry
and exit holes were relatively benign but the middle one did hold some
surprises! We generally shied
away from barreling straight down the middle as this course had lead to
Dan’s earlier stall. Fortunately
we all passed through unscathed and looking forward to a full day of
running the trails. |
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We continued to explore numerous trails
encountering only mild challenges until Eric guided us to one nasty mud
trap. We spent several
minutes probing the depths with one stick or another and basically
agreeing with one another that we’d be crazy to try this with the
Freelanders. We were basically looking at 12-20 inches of water layered on
top of another 12 inches of “whalesh*t”.
Eric told us that this very spot had consumed a friend’s jeep
which, in fact, spent the night embedded in this spot.
Well given that it was the night before Halloween and that the
woods were filling with bow-armed deer hunters none of us was particularly
excited by this idea. |
| However we did manage to goad Dan into launching
his Disco directly into the mess-yeah Dan!
The thick goo quickly asserted itself as Dan’s front end buried
itself, however, and brought forward progress to a sudden halt.
Dan was able to partially extricate his truck but the mud jealously
held onto his Disco and it was time for a snatch recovery.
Phil obliged and we were once again on our way.
(Kudos to Dan for confirming both the depth and consistency of the
mud at the bottom of that pit). We
recovered numerous beer bottles and an old tire from the immediate area
suggesting that others might have spent some time here. |
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We covered a few more narrow trails that applied
pinstriping to all of the trucks and deposited most of a Christmas tree
into Dan’s roof rack. Finally
we found one of a number of sandpits and Phil calmly turned over his truck
to his friend (Heard as Phil’s truck hurtled into one particularly loose
circle: ”Tree! Tree!
That’s a tree”!) . We
wandered down a few more trails and eventually found some of the abandoned
cranberry bogs that are still exist in some areas of the Wharton State
Forest. The trails between
these bogs are in poor shape and provide no room for a turn-around, in
other words they are fun! Our
Topos showed that the roads went through so onward we went.
Our progress was briefly held up by a small flooded bit blocked at
the other end by a small tree. Phil
seized the opportunity to break out his axe and the sapling found itself
about four feet shorter. |
| Scouting down the two roads we found our progress
would be blocked by three large downed trees whose roots were still firmly
attached to the earth (no winching them out of the way) and whose diameter
would not allow an axe-based approach to succeed that week.
Now the silver lining here is that I have since acquired a Stihl
chainsaw so that we can never be stopped again (muwhahahahaha).
Unfortunately, with darkness coming on and no chainsaw at hand
there was nothing to do at the time but turn around and head for the
Batsto ranger station. We
were treated to a very unusual sunset as the sun dipped below the cloud
cover and the sky actually brightened for a few moments before sunset.
We all agreed to head home the short way back through the barrens. This proved to be somewhat spooky as it was now really dark
and there were numerous gentlemen in camo lurking about with compound
bows. Somehow we dodged them all, hit a few minor pits on the way out and
eventually wound up back on the tarmac headed north to face the little
goblins that we knew would be creeping around the next night. |
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The Pinelands of New Jersey is a unique natural
area containing plants and animals found nowhere else and is the home of
over 100 threatened or endangered species.
It is very important therefore that the principles of Tread Lightly
are observed here. Observing
these principles we can help insure that State lands remain open for our
enjoyment, ignoring them will inevitably result in the closure of all but
a few maintained roads. |
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All text and photos on this site-
Copyright 2004 Freelanderliving.com |
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