What an awesome day! Our first stop was at a bridge across the Elk River that the Club had recently repaired....
Then we continued on...our first destination was the top of a mountain that he pointed out...way down the valley. A small herd of Elk dashed across the power line road about hundred yards ahead of us...unfortunately, we didn’t have time to get the camera out. After some riding on fairly easy going gravel and power line roads we turned off and up we went...I think it was about 6 miles straight up to the top and what a view...on both sides of the mountain!The Fording River Coal Mine on one side and the Greenhill Coal Mine next to it.
...and beautiful mountains and valley on the other...
We admired the view and chatted for a bit and then we got back on our quads and headed back down. Once down at the road, we continued along to the turnoff for the next mountain that we were going to ride up. But before we reached the turnoff, we made one side trip up to an exposed coal seam that was on fire. They believe it was lit by a lightning strike around 1915...that’s a long time to be burning! All efforts to put it out have failed so they just monitor it now.
Our next trip up a mountain started off on a very overgrown trail...the trail was there but the bushes had taken over and we were “boonie-bashing” our way through for the first part and then as we got higher it opened right up. We continued up to where we were basically riding the ridge...I must say it got my heart pumping hard in a couple of spots! It is appropriately named “Weary Ridge”. The top of this mountain is black with coal but apparently it is poor quality so it hasn’t been mined. The alpine flowers were just beautiful. Dave said that they quite often see mountain sheep up there...but unfortunately, we didn’t see any today. It was about 1:00 by this time and time for lunch, so we ate our sandwiches while admiring the view and chatting with Dave about the area.
Up we go...
...then up again...
Words nor the pictures just can't adequate describe the beauty of the area...
...and I mean straight down....
The ride back down the mountain was slow for me as we made our way along the ridge...Dave was way in front of me and Steve was way behind me...stopping many times to take pictures...the views were absolutely stunning!
Once down at the bottom, we stopped for a few minutes while Steve put his 2-way radio back on his helmet...it had fallen off...must have been all those bushes and branches brushing against us as we rode through the overgrown trail. All fixed up, we were on our way again.
We stopped a couple of times on our way home...mainly to rest our right-hand thumbs which were getting very sore (the quads have thumb-throttles). We arrived back at the campground at 4:00...we had been out riding the trails for 7 hours! We are so happy that Dave was available to take us out and show us the area. He and his brother, Gord, are very active in the local ATV Club and with the AGM and Jamboree in Prince George this weekend, Gord (being on the Executive) had gone but Dave had decided not to....lucky for us!
We parked our ATV’s, locked them up and went inside to quickly get cleaned up (I had to wash the dust off my face!)...we were meeting Dave across the street at the Pub for a beer. The pub is right across the street...how handy is that?! We ended up having dinner and too much beer at the pub but we had a great time. We were invited to an afternoon barbeque by the river on Sunday and then on Monday, Dave is going to take us out again to show us more of this beautiful area.
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