This saturday I met up wtih my Jeep club and headed up to Walker Valley ORV park. It's about an hours drive north of Seattle and east of Mt. Vernon one or two hills over. It had been a long time since I was last up there (in my rickety Samurai) because there weren't many Jeep trails. However, it looks like the local offroaders have been working with the State DNR to open more 4x4 trail. So much so that it's now worth an entire day up there.
We met up at the park trail head, aired our tires down, I took off my doors, and we then hit the trail. There were 5 Wranglers (3 TJ's and 2 YJs (previous generation of Jeep)) and a Land cruiser. I don't think any of the vehicles were stock at all. All told we probably didn't go more than 10 or 12 miles that day but it took us about 11 hrs before we returned to the trail head. That's ok, because the fun is in the journey, not how fast you get there. . . especially when creeping along in first gear, low range the whole day.
Getting around the entry gate. The primary gate blocks non-prepped
vehicles while the boulders on the side act as a filter of sorts. Here the
Landcruiser lifts a tire a couple feet in the air.
The Lower Mainline trail passes through some dense fir forests areas where
the forest floor is carpted in sword ferns. It was a very somber environ.
Our group was held up for about a half hour as a group of Baja Bugs in
front of us was trying to get their buggies over some root obstacles. It
took them a while but they did it. While it's neat to see different vehicles
on the trail these Baja Bugs weren't cut out for this type of terrain. What
took 30 min to get two bugs though our entire contingent of 6 Jeeps (or
Jeep like rigs) made it over in 2 min.
A close up of the type of terrain we drive over.
An overview of Walker Valley below, just east of the town of Mt. Vernon.
Our entire group taking a breather on the trail.
At times you'll find sections like this: calmer parts of the trail that aren't
challenging at all but offer a very cool environment to pass through. I like
the tunnel like aspect of this young stand of alder tree.s
Toward the end of the day we ran the Express Way trail. On it there is a
large rock outcropping that is very steep and treacherous. Too far over to
one side and you can roll your Jeep off a 5 ft drop. Not good. Especially
when you encounter slimey rock and your spinning tires will suck you right
where you don't want to go. It took me about 5 minutes to make it up. At
one point I had to back up right to the edge to get enough run of
momentum to scoot over the top.
Here's our club president after he made it up the rock outcropping. . . then
there was a rocky side-slope to travers to continue up. Lots of fun!
One of the guys in our club demonstrates how to get high-cenered. Yes,
those are 37" tires on there.
Thought you might like this. . . some of the locals we met basically make
their own buggies. In this case, Toyota engine, transmission, and
transfercase mounted in a Jeep chassis with a Chevrolet rear axle and
some seats from somewhere.
End of the day as the sun sets over Walker Valley.
I'll often optimize the lighting and contrast in photoshop and bump up the saturation a bit. It helps the pictures pop. Usually its by only 5-10% or so. It doesn't take much. I have a reasonably good camera but nothing super special. Photoshop is a post process tool to help fix things my camera is weak on. For instance, I often get a cool blue cast to the photos and using Photoshop to inrease the red levels 1) warms up the image so it doesn't look cold and 2) brings out he color in the mud which can look more gray if there's too much blue. And on a few I'll fuzz up the back ground to emphasize the depth-of-field effect but I don't do that too often becasue it takes a lot of time. I often go over board with that, though, such as with the purple Jeep on the rocky slope.
The other thing I use Photoshop for is rotating the images. Not to exagerate the slope angle of a trail but to correct it. Often you'll see fantastic magazine shots of rigs at super steep angles and such. First reactions are "cool, look at that angle!" and then you realize the people and trees in the background are not right. That people don't naturally stand at a 20 deg angle without falling over. So this is what I rotate for, get the trees up right and the people upright and try to get an accurate reprsentation of the rigs and the trail conditions.
I'll often optimize the lighting and contrast in photoshop and bump up the saturation a bit. It helps the pictures pop. Usually its by only 5-10% or so. It doesn't take much. I have a reasonably good camera but nothing super special. Photoshop is a post process tool to help fix things my camera is weak on. For instance, I often get a cool blue cast to the photos and using Photoshop to inrease the red levels 1) warms up the image so it doesn't look cold and 2) brings out he color in the mud which can look more gray if there's too much blue. And on a few I'll fuzz up the back ground to emphasize the depth-of-field effect but I don't do that too often becasue it takes a lot of time. I often go over board with that, though, such as with the purple Jeep on the rocky slope.
The other thing I use Photoshop for is rotating the images. Not to exagerate the slope angle of a trail but to correct it. Often you'll see fantastic magazine shots of rigs at super steep angles and such. First reactions are "cool, look at that angle!" and then you realize the people and trees in the background are not right. That people don't naturally stand at a 20 deg angle without falling over. So this is what I rotate for, get the trees up right and the people upright and try to get an accurate reprsentation of the rigs and the trail conditions.
Man it looks like ya'll had a blast. As always Jay, your pics are amazing.
I've been a little curious to explore that area. I first saw it in a article from a off-road magazine. It looks like Walker Valley has some interesting challenges. I dont know if my rig would be able to make it though. If its not terribly hard, we should do a JF run there.
I'd definitely say a JF run to Walker would be a good use of a day. There's certainly some challenging sections of trail. You should be able to make it, Micah, but it should give you a run for your money. Hell, it gave me a run for my money, too. Some fun trails.
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