Pucker factor-eleventy billion
From
http://www.nwjeepn.com/WAtrails.htm
We first spotted the trail head for Pucker Ridge 7 or 8 years ago while running Washington State’s Rimrock Lake area trails with the Jolly Jeeper Club from the Portland, Oregon area. We tried making the initial hill climb that begins this trail two or three years in a row but each time the steepness and the loose dusty ash soil (from the eruption of Mount Saint Helens years before) stopped us. We were giving it a fairly hard charge but knew better than to totally banzai the hill as we might get up the hill a ways, have it get even steeper and be trapped with no way to turn around. That would mean sliding down the hill backwards. An idea none of us found appealing. Based on the location of the trail head and its steepness, I believed this trail must be a downhill only (similar to the Blue Slide Trail) and that it began up on Gray Rock Ridge. I searched for the other end for years, but never could find it up there.
Then one year, about 5 years ago, we were up in the Rimrock area in late August when we had some considerable rainfall one night, Next morning dawned cold and wet. I suggested to the rest of our group that, if we were ever going to make this special trail hill climb, that morning would be it. I knew the moisture in the ground might give us the extra traction we needed. At the beginning of the trail, our bravest member, Mark Kaija, lined up, took the bit in his teeth and banzaied the hill. He made it! At a spot a few hundred yards up the hill, the trail got a bit less steep where Mark stopped and used the CB to call the rest of us up one-by-one, I was next and made it on my second or third try. About 4 of us with lots of horsepower made the hill, the last 3 or 4 had to winch up this first part. We all continued up the trail another few hundred yards where it leveled out but appeared to dead-end. Evidently, others before us had made the climb to this point and had turned around and gone back down. This explained the fairly well-defined trail head appearance. We got out on foot and began exploring to see if this trail might actually continue on. We found a very faint sign of an old two-track trail almost completely obscured by windfall. We cleared the windfall and continued on. We came out of the trees into a moonrock field where we picked up the most visible trail sign so far as the trail climbed a rocky ridge up into another stand of trees. In this stand of trees we came on our next adrenaline thrill; a very steep sleigh ride downhill. We all slid down this hill one by one and continued through trees paralleling the fall line of the high Gray rock Ridge. The sidehilling was intense. Major body damage began to mount up for some of us as they slid against the trees.
After everyone made it through this extreme side hill, we encountered a very steep slick uphill followed by the worst steep downhill slider we had been on. One a t a time, we worked everyone up and down both and finally emerged out into an open clearing and still on a fairly well-defined two track trail. We all breathed a sigh of relief as we thought we must be to the trail end. Being late in the afternoon, we stopped for a late lunch break, then started looking for the logging road out.
We had come down two long steep down-hill slides so we naturally assumed the logging road had to be somewhere close. Trouble is it wasn’t anywhere to be found. I started to get a bit concerned about being caught out there at night. None of us wanted to try to back-track out those steep downhills. As we looked for the logging road, we came across the faintest of two-track trails. It was revealed only by the grass being just a bit shorter in each track.
We all continued on and gradually started to realize we were following a trail out onto a sharp hogs-back ridge, very steep to either side. We plowed ahead through dense forest and brush with the hogs-back ridge being barely wider than the Jeeps. Finally we came out into another clearing, but this one being quite steep and side hilly. The trail led up and over a 30’ rise with a rock outcropping perched on top. Our leader, Mark Kaija, drove up on top of the rock outcropping where both sides of his tires straddled the edge. It was a very steep drop off each side of his jeep. The rest of us stopped below and continued on foot up to Mark’s jeep. We had to hang onto the side of his jeep so we could get to the front and see what lay ahead. What lay ahead took our breath away. As we stood on the rock, we looked down past our toes to see the next stretch of the trail. Ahead, almost bare of any trees, lay the steepest and sharpest hogs-back any of us had ever seen. Way below we could see the logging road. Salvation in sight, only to be denied by this impossible ridge. We were now looking at an overnighter in cold wet conditions or an in-the-dark backtrack climb with lots of winching. We were depressed. Our headstrong trail leader, Mark, wanted to press on. Cooler heads prevailed and we decided to send a scouting party ahead on foot. This was a dangerous undertaking even on foot.
Tom Rinella and his son Phillip went carefully down the ridge and disappeared from sight. About 30 minutes later they reappeared and announced the trail did appear to have gone through years ago but was now impassible as it was even worse ahead and just beyond our sight. Now we were trapped. As the rest of us prepared to turn around Mark declared “The hell with it, he was heading down to the logging road.” We all begged him not to, but he fired up and put it in gear heading down. 10 minutes after leaving our sight, Mark called on the radio that he was across and back into the trees having a cigarette. Then one by one we each bent over, kissed our ass goodbye, and headed down. The first down-hill was extremely steep with a vertical drop off the left and an extremely severe sidehill of to the right. To make it down this stretch, we had to place our left tires truly on the edge of the cliff. Several let themselves get about a foot to the right and started sliding down off the right side of the hogs-back. The only way we saved them was to attach a strap to the back end of their rigs and run it to the only tree on this ridge. This allowed them to swing back to the left and onto the cliff edge. At the end of this downhill fin was a saddle where the trail leveled out a bit and zigged around a dead tree snag. Another white knuckler to get around. We had to drive our front tires right to the cliff edge, then cut right. It took each of us about 3 or 4 backups to get around this snag. Now we were faced with a short steep uphill and over the roots of a lone Ponderosa Pine. After making it past this obstacle, we were now in sight of the reason Tom Rinella said the trail was impassible. The trail now went off the left edge of the hogs-back as one of the worst sidehills I have ever seen. But there was Mark over on the other side. The side hill was bare dirt and ash without a single blade of grass but did have the slightest down side rut to try and hold. Making it across was only possible at dead slow and keeping our left and low side tires above the rut. The sidehill was also a bit of a bowl bending to the left, so we had to keep the front end up above the rut so the back end could stay in the rut. Not all of us did this, so several ended up crabbing across at a 45 degree angle as the back end tried to drag them down. After we all made it across, we continued down through the trees and around a side hill that was all of 45 degrees but at least it was in the trees and we did not have to look over the cliff. A few hundred yards further, we were all on the logging road thankful to be alive.
We drove up the logging road about ¼ mile to the west and stopped to look back at the ridge we had come down. We couldn’t believe it! The ridge came down at a 45 degree angle with only a couple of trees for security. None of us would have gone into this trail if we had seen this sight first. This is where we named the trail “Pucker Ridge”. Most of us have never run it again. Perhaps foolishly, several of us have run it again as friends press us to lead them on their first time.
A few weeks later, I called the area Ranger, Ken Sanslow, and asked him if he knew of this trail. He informed me it was part of the old original Spencer Creek trail that came up from Rimrock Lake to the Short and Dirty ridge. Long before the logging roads were put in this high up, Ken had ridden with his father on this trail. Back then, there was enough grass on the trail to make it less slippery. They actually ran the trail in both directions, but now I would never attempt to climb that last Pucker Ridge section as spinning the tires will take you over the edge. If you are tempted to try this trail, I strongly recommend following someone who has done it before. It would help if that someone was also careful and cautious, but not many of those types would ever run this trail.
