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Another month and more winter storms. This one wasn't very
big and precipitation totals were pretty low, but it did put down a
few inches of snow at and above the 6500ft level.
This time we hit a forest service trail that we had tried out a few
weeks ago. Malcolm had read about the trail and knew just that
it started out paved then turned to dirt, was approximately 45
miles long and came back out on a known mountain road.
We left some time around mid day. Malcolm, James Scott and I
in Malcolm's pick up and Tuba 2. At that point we could only
speculate that there was some weather up in the area that we
were going because the overall weather down in the city was
cold and rainy. It took only about 40 minutes to get to the trail
head from my house. At that point it looked doubtful that we
would hit any kind of bad (albeit fun) weather. Malcolm and
Scott took the lead in the 4x4 while James and I followed in the
Tuba. The first section of the trail was mostly paved. Clouds
were thick but still well above us. It didn't take long to get to the
Nike Missile Launch site.

Missile Launch Site

Now going back to when we first started to explore this trail we ran across a
road that cut off of the main trail and lead up to a nearby mountain peak. This
was a few miles from the trail head and seemed to lead to a municipal water
storage area and cellular antenna cluster point. But this turned out not to be
the case. The cellular junk up there was just that, cellular junk, but the water
tanks and close by concrete platforms turned out to be something much more
interesting. After out first trip to this site we learned that the site used to be a
Cold War era Nike Missile Launch site, set there to defend Los Angeles from
Soviet Bombers. For further info click on the link =====>

We were excited to find that at the missile site there was a
very light dusting of snow on the ground. We spent a good
half an hour looking over the site. It was the first time we had
been there during the day. The air was very cold and thick
gray clouds that we had just drove into a few hundred feet
from the summit took visibility down to about one hundred feet.
With little doubt now that we would hit more ice and snow we
loaded back up and got back onto the main trail.
The trail continued on for several more miles running mostly
on the southern sides of the mountain faces. But a good 20
miles into the road we started hitting ice and slush.
Malcolm had read that a man on his roadster motor cycle had
made the drive in good weather in recent years. The trail had
once been fully paved to service a string of military missile
sites o and around that mountain range. But most of it now
was to a point where the point where dirt started and
pavement ended was not very clear.

Skip forward another few miles and we start to get a light but
steady powdery snow fall. The temperature has really
dropped at this point. I could only speculate that it was in the
low 30s to high 20s. As we slowly went up in altitude it got
colder, visibility dropped and more and more snow and ice
covered the road. Not much happened during this section of
the trail.

This was all fresh snow fall. It was slippery but with little effort
the rear tires of Tuba dug into it and grabbed the ground.
But Not long after this picture, somewhere mid trail Malcolm
put on his rear wheel chains. I didn't bring chains however.
But we all decided to just keep going and turn around only if
we really have to.
This was also about the time Scott unloaded his quad. He
was going to drive as much of the trail as possible in jeans,
gloves and a jacket.