DRAM 2, Dirt Roads Across Maine.

spencyg

This Space For Rent
“Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.”
~Henri Frederic Amiel


The side road to Kokadjo was uneventful. Lots of hunters, lots of orange, no deer.

Kokadjo Trading Post was bustling, as its the only place to get basic supplies and gasoline for miles around.



We lunched in preparation for a section of trail ahead which I had been a bit wary of.



Population, Not Many.



Just a brief jaunt on pavement and we were back to the trail.



It must be said at this point that the path I had plotted was clearly shown on the map....at least, each end of it was. The center section they must have forgotten to draw in. Or maybe the map printer messed up....







As before, elevation brought snow. There was an interesting contrast in colors and foliage as we passed through a Tamarack grove.



Up and Up and Up. I was beginning to get a little feeling in my stomach. I typically get this feeling when something bad is about to happen. Maybe it was the cold sausage dogs I had for lunch.

The trail got tighter but we were still following full sized vehicle tracks, so onward we pushed. Nobody at this point had any hope of keeping the brush scratches at bay.



There came a point where I thought Boomer's size may be a liability being in the front. As the terrain steepened further, Ryan took the lead in the Excursion. With a welded rear and 37's, the chances of him getting up and over what lay ahead was far better, and at this point my blood pressure was starting to climb in step with the terrain.







As we would climb one steep section, the leading vehicles will pull ahead enough for everybody to get lined up. Once one truck made it, we'd radio down for the next to follow. Having somebody too far ahead or getting stuck too far from where help could get them wasn't something we could tolerate, so this slow progression in the convoy was a necessary annoyance.





Sometimes hard work doesn't necessarily return what you had hoped. That wasn't the case here. Rounding the bend at the summit was a jaw dropping experience. The air was crisp and clear, and the view over Moosehead lake and the surrounding hills was nothing short of spectacular.









The snow at the peak was windswept, so much of the "road" was covered in maybe 3", while the sides of the path had maybe 15" of snow. Filled with a sense of accomplishment at having conquered the unmapped peak, we set our course down the other side of the slope.

Now, this is where hindsight provides painful clarity. Hindsight would have seen the absence of the truck tracks we were previously following. Hindsight would have recognized that the route down the back side of the mountain was traversed only by a lonely pair of ATV tracks. Hindsight would have considered the air temperature and the time of day, and possibly triggered a different decision. Different than the decision we made to push forward down an ATV track strewn with snow covered boulders.

I believe it was Clay Croft who said "Adventure is the respectful pursuit of trouble". This was as respectable a pursuit of trouble as I've participated in for quite some time.

The problem with coming down a mountainside rock field in the winter time is that it is a one way journey. Once you're down, you aren't going back up. Further, remember how that map didn't actually show a line connecting the road. Now I know why. This wasn't a road. This wasn't a trail. This was a fiasco.

The first obstacle was a "high ratio" gully lined on each side with rocks. The Excursion made the crossing look easy, so Boomer tried it next. I really hate combining Boomer and Momentum, but in this case it was the only way through. Luckily, with the keen signaling from our trail leader Ryan, Boomer passed through the first trial without too much fuss.





The others followed.





Being the least capable rig in the group certainly has its drawbacks, but when you appreciate that once Boomer made it through that everybody else could too, it was at least a small comfort.

Around the bend we went, and there in front of us was the spot we'd spend the next 2 hours in....



To Be Continued.
 

spencyg

This Space For Rent
“I'm allergic to rocks hitting me in the face.”
~ Mike Rowe


I held back a bit as Ryan threaded his Excursion through the eye of the rock maze that lay ahead. I watched in pseudo-horror as his proven rock crawling / trail riding / *** kicking rig struggled through the rock piles, getting hung up but never stuck. With 2" less axle clearance, no lockers, and probably an additional 2000lbs of weight, I was intimidated.

He finally made it through, never once really getting stuck, and called to me on the radio to come on down. Boomer did fine when gravity was helping, but this obstacle was on flat ground. 30 feet into the gauntlet and I was stuck. Hard.





The tires were pinned between rocks to the front, and rocks to the back. Applying power did nothing but burn tires and waste fuel. Ryan thought it was time for the winch, so I rolled it out as he backed up to provide an anchor point.



My winch has never been awesome, and like many who read this tale, its usage in real life has been limited at best. It is there, and I test it once in awhile to make sure it works, but beyond that this would be considered a true trial run. Hardly a good time to be testing out equipment, we had no choice.

I reeled the winch in while sitting in the cab, and Ryan was sucked backwards against the tension. A little power was applied to the tires but there was absolutely no forward movement. We tried a couple more pulls before Will pointed out that my front differential cover was directly in front of a large rock. Forward wasn't going to work. Backward wasn't going to work either because the rear diff was pinned in a similar manner.

We got out a strap to anchor off a large boulder off to the left in hopes of pulling the rig sideways away from the gate-keeper of a rock in front of the differential cover.





Nada. After pulling a few more times the winch motor gave up the ghost. I tried bonking the case with a 2x4 in hopes that maybe a brush was just stuck, but it was clear the motor was dead. No winch.

We needed to stop for a minute and regroup. There was no way the rest of the trucks could pass by me, as the path through the field was narrow. Boomer must come out.

At this point, as my heart rate maintained a rather unhealthy pace, I had a vision.



Boomer on top of a mountain, 30 years in the future. Riddled with bullet holes with all the clever bits long since pillaged. In the moment, this was very real.

Snap back to reality, Ryan was busy removing a set of 4 MaxTrax from his roof rack. Now, we've all heard of these, right? Funny looking and possibly a little gimmicky. For $300 a pair, they are an expensive bit of kit to use approximately...never.

Well, all personal biases aside, I felt there certainly wasn't any harm in trying. Once we sorted the retrieval straps out, we popped one under each tire and I hopped in the cab.





With despair setting in to the inevitable loss of my beloved van to the elements, I put it in gear and....

Idled right out of the hole.

Holy $#!+.

A couple more setups and I was on solid ground. I won't leave home again without my own set. I'm a believer. It should be said that even with the right equipment, you need to have people in your team who know how to use them effectively and safely. Ryan is literally a professional vehicle-based explorer, and without his knowledge and confidence I am certain the outcome in that boulder field would have been far less cheerful.

The rest of the trucks made it through the maze without nearly as much drama as I'd brought to the table. While they were helping each other through, I went for a walk. With that obstacle behind us, I needed to know what lie ahead. As I traversed the path, the silence caught me by surprise. I don't know whether it was the layout of the trail, or the snow, or what, but when I stopped moving for a second, the sound of nothing was overwhelming. You sometimes read about people who can hear blood rushing in their ears. You're reading it again here. It was profound. I'm a city dweller, so silence isn't something I'm accustomed to. I used to live in the country, and that kind of quiet wasn't anything I'd experienced there either. As I stopped to look over the trail and over the mountains, a sense of calm seemed to mellow the panic that was so prevalent just moments before. I was surrounded with amazing people, crossing an amazing trail in an amazing place, all in the name of an amazing trip. We would overcome.



I hiked back up to the group who by that point was waiting on me. I had identified 2 more challenges down the bank, one being another gully crossing, and the other a large rock blocking half the trail. Once again, Ryan gracefully maneuvered his beast, and I followed with far less grace. Slowly we wound through the maze, all the while being blinded by the setting sun. The temperature was dropping and we needed to get off the mountain before dark. At this point I had no idea how long this route really was, or whether the outlet would be open, or blocked by boulders.







As the last slivers of sun dipped below the western hills, we rolled down onto the marked portion of the road. There were handshakes all around as we had truly accomplished something. The team agreed that if full size vehicles had ever been through that pass, it certainly wasn't during the winter. There was even less of a chance of a full size camper van having ever navigated that path. Boomer was unharmed except for a burned up winch and a badly caved front differential cover. Luckily, the ring gear wasn't rubbing and there were no leaks, so we gathered ourselves and headed toward the camp spot for the night.

At this point we were running in the dark. The roads were...well...roads at this point, so forward progress was good. My GPS was saying we still had over 100 miles to go, which was a bit hard to believe. Around 6:30 we pulled over to have a team meeting. I didn't want to push the group any harder than we'd already all been pushed and proposed an alternate route which would add pavement, but reduce the total miles ahead. They unanimously rejected my proposal, wanting to keep true to the DRAM2 route. Eventually the GPS sorted itself out, and 100 miles turned into 25 miles. During the night driving I was privileged enough to spy 2 foxes and a large rabbit. Unfortunately with this kind of traveling setup, the rest of the trucks only saw my dust. The dreary driving conditions spurred good discussion over the CB's, and Ashwin started "Name This Song" which was a welcome relief. Around 8:00pm we rolled into our campsite at the head of Endless Lake. At first it seemed it would be too crammed with all the rigs sharing one site, but we made it work and it was great.

Weary as we all were, I set to work on a fire while the rest of the group did setup and dinner. I was too exhausted to cook, favoring cheese, crackers, tuna sandwiches and wine over the grilled meal I had planned. The air was still and by 10:00pm the only sound was snoring.

To Be Continued.
 
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BenHedrick

Adventurer
Living in Florida and looking at this, I am COLD.... BUT, I so want to be there!!! GREAT pics, thanks for sharing...!!!!!!!!!!

Ben
 

BenHedrick

Adventurer
I would love to build my tj into a brute but I need to buy a house first......


Hmmmm.... I'm just saying.... House/Brute... Problem solved...

Lancaster-camper3big.jpg


Ben
 

Barrows

Adventurer
^My wife might not agree, but i like the way you think. But enough of highjacking Spencer's thread, let's heard more about the trip. ^
 

matthewp

Combat Truck Monkey
Spencyg, this is an awesome write-up of an awesome trip! is this route fairly easy to map? If so, what maps would you recommend? my wife and I are planning a trip to the Canadian east coast next summer and I would love to run at least some sections of the DRAM.
 

spencyg

This Space For Rent
“Sometimes you have to choose between a bunch of wrong choices and no right ones. You just have to choose which wrong choices feels the least wrong.”
~Colleen Hoover


6:45AM

THE ALARM GOES OFF

I couldn't really move. The intensity from the day before had taken its toll, and my entire body felt like it had paid the price. Slowly, ever so slowly, I dragged myself into action and got some coffee on. Last night was a 65 degree thermostat night which was a good choice, as getting dressed wasn't something I could rush into on this particular AM.
Once the basics of the morning were taken care of (coffee, putting Boomer in "travel" mode, dishes, etc), I headed out into the crisp clear morning to see how the rest of the adventurers had fared overnight. It seems everbody survived the night, and as in previous mornings I was the last to make an appearance.



Unfortunately, two of our crew were headed out. Ashwin and Elise had a long drive home with responsibilities that needed attending to. After getting packed up, we wished farewell and safe travels to our new found friends. They had debated whether to hang with us for awhile longer, but the miles that we needed to pass under the tires would have had them home very late, and given how the trip had gone so far, there were few guarantees that the plan would in fact resemble in any way reality.

Will needed a touch of air in his tires after the mountain pass trail the day before, so we got him sorted in short order and then headed out. Just around the corner was a falls that fed Endless lake, and a bridge over those falls.





"Bridge"

Ok Ok. So in my infinite mapping wisdom, I saw the marker on the paper map that said this bridge was out. Then I went to the same spot on Google Earth and the bridge was in, so I thought to myself "Oh, they fixed the bridge". Yeah, they fixed the snot out of it.

We weren't going that way. Luckily, I had acknowledged the possibility of the "bridge" being out even after seeing via satellite images to be viable, so I had a second route planned over the top of Endless Lake. This required a re-routing and backtracking which would more than double the 15 miles left into Lincoln. Will was running pretty low on fuel already, and Jon wasn't far behind. Jon's spare fuel caddy was full, and he graciously offered to empty it into Will's tank.



With Jon at a 1/4 tank and Will at just below 1/3, that 30 miles wasn't going to be a problem. Boomer's 40 gallons of onboard capacity and the 5 gallon reserve can meant I had days of capacity left, and Ryan had an equal amount of fuel left to play with.

Backtracking 6 miles or so, we recollected a rather humorous conversation from the night before as we were driving in where the topic focused on an entire section of trees which were all bent in toward the road. There were lots of thoughts as to why these trees were shaped like this, the most realistic being that they were likely running from something in the woods.

We pulled off onto the revised route, and the first part of the road seemed quite good. Things were a little muddy, but nothing to get concerned about



As we progressed down the revised route, things started getting tighter.



And Tighter.



And Tighter.



Taking care of the multitudes of falling trees would normally have been the job of....

zombie_killing_weapons_chainsaw.jpg


But, Jon had a better idea.

587d892e-9cbd-4081-bd43-ebf085d10e9a.png


The sawzall was the tool for the job with all these sub-6" blow downs. Fast, clean, quiet. Forward, Ho!

Unfortunately, Forward didn't get us very far.



We could have pushed forward I suppose, but as far down the trail as you could see it was a maze of blow downs. Clearly we were trying to go somewhere that nobody had tried to go in a long time. Time being what it was, we needed to re-route once again.

I huddled at the computer for 10 minutes or so, then proposed the revised route to the group. Fuel was now starting to become a concern, so the path forward needed to be something we all agreed upon.

After some creative backing, we found ourselves within 1000ft of the campsite from the night before, headed down yet another new road. As we stopped to take in the near-swamp we were about to enter, Will dropped a bomb. His limited slip differential had just grenaded while traversing a greasy spot in the road a few miles back. He wasn't sure whether it would be a problem or not, but thought we should all know. At this point it was really up to him and how comfortable he was heading into the unknown with questionable yet critical hardware. The decision was to push ahead, hoping 4WD would keep pressure off the rear end.



It was a wet mess. Luckily the road was pretty solid and the water holes all had firm footing. This was important both for the safety and pace of travel, as well as not destroying the road as we passed. It is a strange feeling when you pass by a gate...that is open....that wasn't on the map. Being grateful that it is open instead of locked didn't even occur to me, as I felt the gate shouldn't be there in the first place!



This particular gate was a bit of an engineering marvel. Somebody really must have gone out of their way to make this beauty. One side looked like an old trailer frame on edge, the other was definitely somebody's attempt at modern art. Definitely.



We found ourselves, after 2 hours from leaving camp, approximately 1/4 mile down the road ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE! Success can be measured with a 6" ruler sometimes.

Unfortunately, the crossroad which we had just arrived at was not the smooth dirt road leading to Lincoln that we had hoped for. It was instead a rocky knarly trail that represented 10 miles of slow going ahead. Looking at the map, there wasn't a good alternate alternate alternate path (yes, at this point we were up to alternate to the 3rd power. The only option was to turn down this ominous pathway in hopes it would smooth out as the miles progressed. I could see the concern in Will's face at the look of the road ahead. All or nothing. We wouldn't leave anybody behind, even if it meant dragging him out with straps.

The path didn't smooth out. The path didn't get better. The sawzall got a good workout as we meandered through "roads" that once again, hadn't been traveled in a long time. There was lots of water and nobody escaped the paint-shredding foliage which we all dragged our rigs though.





Navigating in this mess was challenging, and we got turned around a couple times. 5 miles from the end point of the leg, it seemed like the road just evaporated. With Will running on near fumes, and Jon not far behind there was some serious concern as to whether the whole group would make it out at once or not. In a last ditch effort, Ryan pushed down a trail we had already been down but thought it was leading the wrong way, only to find it dump out on an actual road. At this point my CB radio antenna wire had been stripped from the side of the van by the onslaught of trees dragging down my sides, so I wasn't able to hear the news directly. Luckily, we had established a bit of a relay system between the rig that was directly behind me, as the portable CB radio I was temporarily using would only go back 1 car length. Once Ryan relayed back that we were in luck, everybody got a move on and we quickly exited the trail system..





No more than 2 miles from our destination in Lincoln, we got stopped.



I think we were all a bit surprised by this, as we all go out of our way to put overland adventure travel in a good light. To get the attention of the authorities at this point wasn't anything any of us had planned on.

Admittedly, I was 1000ft down the road when I got the relay from Ryan that we had trouble. I stopped and walked back to where Will and Jon were getting grilled by the officer. The first thing that came to light was that we had been traversing Indian reserve land. I should have been paying attention to this but hadn't, and had no idea. Even had I known, I wasn't aware that traversing through Indian held land was a crime. Maintaining a positive and respectful rapport in a situation like this is critical, and we all let the guy say his piece before inserting our own words. He took issue with us traveling in offroad vehicles through his territory. He was somewhat skeptical that we weren't illegally hunting. He then asked us what we were doing and where we came from. This opened the door to explain our trip, our intentions, and what we were (and weren't) doing. His guard visibly lowered as we began to explain where we had come from and what our plans were. I then asked him to explain what process we should have taken to traverse the territory we had just come through, and he said there was no process, and if we were just traveling through than it wasn't a problem. I was confused. At first we were pulled over because we were passing through, but now we're not in trouble for passing through. I suspect, had it not been hunting season, this encounter would have never occurred. Being respectful of the territory we pass through, and the people who control that territory is paramount to the long term success of the overland travel lifestyle. As we all boarded our vehicles (violation-free) and headed down the road, I was very aware of how our travels take us into places we aren't accustomed to, and allow us to interact with people and cultures we are not familiar with. We weren't doing anything wrong on this day, but to travel through an area that is in fact sensitive to particular use and not be aware of it seemed avoidable, and is one aspect of travel and group planning I will be paying particularly close attention to in the future.

Just a couple short miles down the road and we hit pavement and fuel. Will had been running on a gas light for the last half hour so running on fumes would have been generous...



It was around 1:30pm. Will and Ralph had no choice but to use the remaining life in their nearly-destroyed rear differential to make a try for home. I understood and agreed fully, but it still was hard to see yet another team leave the group. Ryan also felt like this was the right time to break from the group. As they both headed toward the Interstate and home, Jon and I bandaged up my CB antenna wire so I could have full function from the base unit. Our plan was a push for Calais. It was supposed to be around 120 more miles, with 70 of those miles being on a very well maintained dirt highway called the Stud Mill Road. If we could get to that road, the remaining journey would be relatively painless.

A few miles of pavement later, we were once again on dirt.



Unfortunately, about 10 miles in we came across a locked gate. This gate wasn't on the map, but that didn't matter now.



We looked over the area maps and decided to try and circumvent this portion of dirt and pick it back up down the road a ways. 10 miles back and 5 more miles of pavement later, we were on dirt once again. The road was actually really nice for 15 miles then it just ended, blocked with large boulders by a logging operation. Hoping to find that they had just redirected the route, we drove up through the stockyard but quickly found that to be a dead end as well.





There was a narrow trail headed into the woods, but it didn't lead anywhere that we needed to go. With a heavy heart, I saw the need to call off the chase for 2014. The light was waning, we were deep into the woods, and the trail was dead. I did scope out the map for a little while as Jon hiked down the path to see if it led anywhere. Had it been late morning there were a couple more tracks we could have explored, but with just two trucks and fading sunlight, it made no sense to push on. This was the end of DRAM2.

Back to pavement we went. After airing up at the gas station, we bid farewell and each headed in our own direction.



Boomer has never run so good as it did on the 3 hour drive home. Will and Ralph got back to Western Mass without incident. Ryan, Ashwin and Elise all got back with time to spare. The collective impression of the trip was very good and I think we all feel we've expanded our group of friends and added to a list of adventures which will be talked about around campfires and gas pumps for years to come. In my mind, not making it to Calais merely opens the door for the next installment of DRAM.

The journey isn't over.

The trip is not complete.

The story will continue.

SG
 
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