Travels With Grond
I drove up to Little Last Chance Creek Canyon yesterday. It's one of my favorite places on a day off, especially on a bad-weather day when people are inclined to stay home and I've got a good chance of having the place to myself.
Little Last Chance is one of those places I go when I need to clear my head. It's a small canyon with steep walls that winds down from Frenchman Lake into Sierra Valley north of Reno, just over the California line. The eponymous creek is a noisy one, made of exuberant whitewater and the occasional hidden trout pool. The ponderosa forests and rough contours of the canyon walls are especially gorgeous when there's a dusting of snow, like there was yesterday.
I'm going to stop the descriptive prose here. Whenever I write about a place like Little Last Chance I always end up pissed off at my inadequate writing skills because I inevitably end up sounding like watered-down Aldo Leopold or someone doing a parody of John Muir and falling flat on his face. I just don't have the descriptive power at my command to communicate what a place like Little Last Chance does for me. The simplest and most powerful thing I can say about it is this: It is peaceful. When I go to a place like Little Last Chance, turn off the car engine, step outside and hear only the distant sound of running water and the crunch of my feet on fresh snow over the deafening silence of the mountains in winter, at that moment I can remember what peace feels like.
Yesterday I drove all the way up through the canyon to it's source, Frenchman Lake. Frenchman is actually a man-made lake (or at least a man enhanced lake) impounded behind a small dam. The road up the creek continues over the dam itself, then up and around a few curves to a handful of lakeside campsites. I wasn't planning on staying up there, of course (I'm not even sure that's allowed this time of year), but I did at least want somewhere to sit and look out at the partially frozen lake and enjoy the silence for a while.
Of course, up there in the Plumas National Forest the roads are not always kept completely free of snow and ice, and Grond (my faithful Suzuki Sidekick) is not as reliable in the snow as one might assume because he's lightweight for an SUV, doesn't possess a terribly powerful engine, and his 4-wheel drive is shot. Just as we rounded the first curve in the road and headed up a steep grade, Grond lost his footing, slid sideways just a bit, and came to a complete stop. There, for a few seconds alone on a hillside I was able to enjoy the thrill of spinning my wheels helplessly on the encrusted snow and ice, the car going absolutely nowhere.
I soon realized that I wasn't going to be able to regain traction and continue up the hill. Lucky for me I was the only one on the road, but I clearly couldn't stay where I was since I was blocking one of the two travel lanes. My only choice was to utilize gravity by setting Grond in reverse and rolling back down the hill I'd just come up. The only problem was that directly behind me lay a completely blind curve in the road. Even though I could hear no one coming and had only seen two other cars on the long drive up the canyon, I decided that I couldn't risk riding down the hill in reverse, particularly on a snowy road where stopping suddenly might prove impossible. So I decided I would do the only sensible thing; I would use gravity to get the car moving in reverse down the hill and smoothly execute a three-point turn in the middle of the road, thus allowing me to drive back down the hill in the natural, face-first manner that God intended.
You can probably see where this is going. Sure, I was able to swing backward and to the left for the first leg of my three-point turn. But as soon as Grond swung perpendicular to the road and gravity was no longer my ally, the car once again came to a dead standstill on the ice-encrusted pavement. Only now we were straddling both lanes of the small road and any vehicle that rounded the blind curve to our left would have only a moment to react before T-boning us good.
Suddenly at that moment, at a helpless standstill in a such a vulnerable position, I felt dumber than I've ever felt in my life. Stranded sideways on an icy road with a car clearly not capable of handling the conditions, if anyone were to drive around the corner at that point I would have more likely died of embarrassment than in a fiery crash. And then I did what most people do when something happens that makes them feel really dumb: I became irrationally angry at the whole situation. In my anger I decided to do what was probably the dumbest thing I'd yet come up with that day: I cut the wheel hard to the right and down the hill, got out of the driver's seat leaving the door hanging wide open with the engine running and the automatic transmission still in drive so that the rear wheels were still spinning helplessly on the ice, walked behind the vehicle, and began to push. If I had a plan (and in retrospect I'm not actually sure that I did) I guess it was to get the car slowly rolling down the hill. Of course, there was every chance that the car would get away from me completely and roll down an embankment or even right into the lake itself, but I was too pissed off to contemplate that. Since the wheels spin just a little with the car in drive but no foot on the gas, once the car got rolling I would probably have time to run around the SUV and hop into the driver's seat before anything bad happened. In hindsight, this is maybe the worst plan I've ever come up with in my life. But out there, alone by a frozen lake on a narrow, windy road, it seemed to make perfect sense.
Somehow, for some reason, it actually worked. I had to rock Grond back and forth a few times to get his momentum going, but once the rear wheels rolled out of the slick, icy pits that they'd spun for themselves, the SUV began to roll slowly and gently down the hill. Luckily I did not slip or stumble, but was able to jump into the open driver's side door, took control of the wheel, and guided Grond the rest of the way down the hill. Feeling more sheepish than I have in a long, long time, I made up my mind to start the long drive back to Reno and the it's relatively ice-free roads. The peace of the mountains would have to wait for another day. For the time being I was just glad no one had seen me acting like such a moron.
I'm sure I'll head back up to Little Last Chance Creek again before long, but next time I'll either have snow tires or I'll borrow someone's else's 4-wheel drive. Volunteers?
Little Last Chance is one of those places I go when I need to clear my head. It's a small canyon with steep walls that winds down from Frenchman Lake into Sierra Valley north of Reno, just over the California line. The eponymous creek is a noisy one, made of exuberant whitewater and the occasional hidden trout pool. The ponderosa forests and rough contours of the canyon walls are especially gorgeous when there's a dusting of snow, like there was yesterday.
I'm going to stop the descriptive prose here. Whenever I write about a place like Little Last Chance I always end up pissed off at my inadequate writing skills because I inevitably end up sounding like watered-down Aldo Leopold or someone doing a parody of John Muir and falling flat on his face. I just don't have the descriptive power at my command to communicate what a place like Little Last Chance does for me. The simplest and most powerful thing I can say about it is this: It is peaceful. When I go to a place like Little Last Chance, turn off the car engine, step outside and hear only the distant sound of running water and the crunch of my feet on fresh snow over the deafening silence of the mountains in winter, at that moment I can remember what peace feels like.
Yesterday I drove all the way up through the canyon to it's source, Frenchman Lake. Frenchman is actually a man-made lake (or at least a man enhanced lake) impounded behind a small dam. The road up the creek continues over the dam itself, then up and around a few curves to a handful of lakeside campsites. I wasn't planning on staying up there, of course (I'm not even sure that's allowed this time of year), but I did at least want somewhere to sit and look out at the partially frozen lake and enjoy the silence for a while.
Of course, up there in the Plumas National Forest the roads are not always kept completely free of snow and ice, and Grond (my faithful Suzuki Sidekick) is not as reliable in the snow as one might assume because he's lightweight for an SUV, doesn't possess a terribly powerful engine, and his 4-wheel drive is shot. Just as we rounded the first curve in the road and headed up a steep grade, Grond lost his footing, slid sideways just a bit, and came to a complete stop. There, for a few seconds alone on a hillside I was able to enjoy the thrill of spinning my wheels helplessly on the encrusted snow and ice, the car going absolutely nowhere.
I soon realized that I wasn't going to be able to regain traction and continue up the hill. Lucky for me I was the only one on the road, but I clearly couldn't stay where I was since I was blocking one of the two travel lanes. My only choice was to utilize gravity by setting Grond in reverse and rolling back down the hill I'd just come up. The only problem was that directly behind me lay a completely blind curve in the road. Even though I could hear no one coming and had only seen two other cars on the long drive up the canyon, I decided that I couldn't risk riding down the hill in reverse, particularly on a snowy road where stopping suddenly might prove impossible. So I decided I would do the only sensible thing; I would use gravity to get the car moving in reverse down the hill and smoothly execute a three-point turn in the middle of the road, thus allowing me to drive back down the hill in the natural, face-first manner that God intended.
You can probably see where this is going. Sure, I was able to swing backward and to the left for the first leg of my three-point turn. But as soon as Grond swung perpendicular to the road and gravity was no longer my ally, the car once again came to a dead standstill on the ice-encrusted pavement. Only now we were straddling both lanes of the small road and any vehicle that rounded the blind curve to our left would have only a moment to react before T-boning us good.
Suddenly at that moment, at a helpless standstill in a such a vulnerable position, I felt dumber than I've ever felt in my life. Stranded sideways on an icy road with a car clearly not capable of handling the conditions, if anyone were to drive around the corner at that point I would have more likely died of embarrassment than in a fiery crash. And then I did what most people do when something happens that makes them feel really dumb: I became irrationally angry at the whole situation. In my anger I decided to do what was probably the dumbest thing I'd yet come up with that day: I cut the wheel hard to the right and down the hill, got out of the driver's seat leaving the door hanging wide open with the engine running and the automatic transmission still in drive so that the rear wheels were still spinning helplessly on the ice, walked behind the vehicle, and began to push. If I had a plan (and in retrospect I'm not actually sure that I did) I guess it was to get the car slowly rolling down the hill. Of course, there was every chance that the car would get away from me completely and roll down an embankment or even right into the lake itself, but I was too pissed off to contemplate that. Since the wheels spin just a little with the car in drive but no foot on the gas, once the car got rolling I would probably have time to run around the SUV and hop into the driver's seat before anything bad happened. In hindsight, this is maybe the worst plan I've ever come up with in my life. But out there, alone by a frozen lake on a narrow, windy road, it seemed to make perfect sense.
Somehow, for some reason, it actually worked. I had to rock Grond back and forth a few times to get his momentum going, but once the rear wheels rolled out of the slick, icy pits that they'd spun for themselves, the SUV began to roll slowly and gently down the hill. Luckily I did not slip or stumble, but was able to jump into the open driver's side door, took control of the wheel, and guided Grond the rest of the way down the hill. Feeling more sheepish than I have in a long, long time, I made up my mind to start the long drive back to Reno and the it's relatively ice-free roads. The peace of the mountains would have to wait for another day. For the time being I was just glad no one had seen me acting like such a moron.
I'm sure I'll head back up to Little Last Chance Creek again before long, but next time I'll either have snow tires or I'll borrow someone's else's 4-wheel drive. Volunteers?
posted by Yukon Sully | 9:11 PM
3 Comments:
Your story reminds me of the time your dad did something on the brilliant side when we lived in St. Paul. It had snowed quite a bit during the night, so when he went down to his car to go work, he discovered that the car was snowed in to its little parking spot. He was in a hurry, so rather than shovel it out, he just got in the car, put it in reverse, and gunned the engine. He shot across the narrow street and hit a concrete wall. That little Mustang's butt was kinda bashed in after that (not bad-- the car was still driveable). It now was a constant reminder of how foolish it is to make risky choices. Your risky choice worked out for you, but it could have been disasterous.
Well, remember your Alabama training. That's what pine branches are made for. They are brittle, lightweight, break easily, and you put them under all four wheels on front and back, then move V-E-R-Y slowly in the direction in which you wish to proceed.
Great read.
Reminds me of the time I tried to save a few bucks by poaching a Christmas tree. At least I had my van to sleep in when I got stuck in the snow and mud but the 4 mile walk out the next day was miserable.
If you think you'll run into ice, buy a 25 # bag of rock salt and pour into a bunch of gallon jugs (milk or bleach). It's easy to toss enough around your tires to get you going.
Even if you don't have to use the salt, it comes in handy to get that person out of the way that tried to turn around in the middle of the road.
Summertime, try the drive up to Mt. Davidson & Ophir Peek. You can see downtown Reno & Virginia City at the same time.
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