The interesting thing about ATVs (or rather my personality) is that I never every use them for fun. I’ve got shit to do. They help me get shit done. They’re not toys so much as colleagues. The closest to “fun” my ATV has ever seen (since I’ve owned it at least) was a dead deer slung over the cargo rack. Why? I have no idea.
At the trailhead, it was supposedly 55 degrees. It felt like 30. It was windy but not raining and that’s better than the rest of the month! I’d jammed a daypack full of crap and reflected to myself that I usually prepare far more thoughtfully. Tough shit, time to roll. I strapped my daypack to the front cargo rack, rolled off my worn-out utility trailer (the same one that was a makeshift boat trailer all summer), and was gone.
You know those dudes in ATV ads that are dressed like astronauts and equipped better than Louis and Clark when they ride? I looked nothing like that. I didn’t even wear a helmet.
I look absolutely nothing like this.
[Rant] If you’re about to bark at me about safety… back off. I rode a bicycle without a helmet as a child, as an adult I run chainsaws, use guns, and drink liquor. These are the things adults used to do without comment. Now we act like it’s an OSHA nightmare. I attend to safety but don’t shit my pants driving an ATV down a trail like I need goddamn battle armor. Life is to be lived and the safest thing to do with an ATV is to not own one. On this trip my biggest risk was hypothermia and getting lost. For that, I was amply prepared. [/Rant]
I just cruised along easy peasy. I was in no hurry. For one thing I had very few tools and frankly know jack shit about ATV repairs anyway. I wasn’t about to push it and break my old ATV. For that matter I was out there to decompress, not race. Nor was I equipped for true mayhem (see: no helmet above).
The best ATV is the one you have. Note the SPOT satcom clipped to my daypack. I’m trying to get in the habit of always having it. So far it’s working out OK.
In the woods I tend to hike where I want to go. ATVs are fast. They change the scale. I don’t have a speedometer so I didn’t know how fast I was going. I don’t have an odometer so I didn’t know how far I’d gone. All I could really say was that an hour after departure I’d gone far enough that it would be a fucking death march to get home.
Not that I was worried. I had all sort of navigational shit with me. I had a county plat map, a snowmobile trail guide, my GPS (which I never turned on), and my trusty SPOT (which has both communication and location capacity). Unlike my usual activities, this was a low key day. If the ATV crapped out, I’d overland with feet and compass to the nearest road and SPOT text Mrs. Curmudgeon for a ride. (How I’d retrieve a dead ATV is something I’d have to figure out later.)
Oddly, the trail system turned into a novel navigational mess. I had a million ways to plot a course to extraction but was instantly lost on a simple trail system. I’ve never done trails before and it was all new to me. I also, and incorrectly, associate trails with rich people and spandex wearers on mountain bikes. It’s just not my scene. I’m more of a slink through the underbrush kinda’ guy.
The trail system was ample and convoluted. There were signs everywhere and none of them matched my plat map OR my trail map. I was baffled by multiple overlapping jurisdictional bullshit divisions… each with their own signs.
I eventually sussed out that RCE was Rock Creek Equestrians. Their signs that said something like RCE-B-23, and presumably these bits were for horses (which share some but not all trails with ATVs). Regardless, it didn’t show up on either of my maps.
Other signs had a mysterious icon. I eventually deduced it to mean snowmobile (which also shared some of the trails). I was (as always) annoyed that we have a perfectly good language (English) but somehow post literate fucknuts now run society. “Snowmobile” is ten letters. Just use the damn word. Icons are annoying, as if there might be illiterate Estonians on the trail and a cartoon that looks (at best vaguely) like a snowmobile is the wisest way to mark things.
Maddeningly snowmobile sign XR-98.1 didn’t match the snowmobile map I had in my pocket. In fact the map mostly served to confuse me. I think the map came from the local snowmobilers (Happy Pine Snowmobile Enthusiasts) and the trail signs emanated from some vaguely state level snowmobile trail sign database. The signs looked like they cost more than they ought to. Whoever is in charge of the signs would probably rather be going over budget on a highly-funded, never finished, monorail in LA than putting up trail signs in the forest.
Then there was series of ATV/UTV trails with various names; Rock Loft, Twisty Trail, Rabbit Ridge. These made sense but after a few miles full names were shortened to abbreviations (RL, TT, RR). None of these were on any maps.
I found a nice warming hut where a big sheet of plywood once had the trail map… and now doesn’t. Later I found another place that said “bathroom” and there was nothing there at all. I wonder if the snowmobile people install the world’s least hospitable porta-potti every winter? If so, good for them.
Also, sometimes the same physical trail was part of two virtual trails. I’d wind up looking at a sign that said RR-4/RL-19 and interpreting that as Rabbit Ridge / Rocky Loft. One had numbers increasing the other had numbers decreasing.
This shit is why I usually just follow a compass.
I didn’t sweat it too much. I mostly just wandered, turning from trail to trail and gave myself up to the moment.
Occasionally, a trail would cross a road and I’d eagerly check my plat book (which shows ALL roads). This was a disappointment as the road signs would say something like “Old Bill’s Shoe Road” while the plat book would say “County Road 39”.
Then all hell broke loose with roads. I wandered into a National Forest. I think (but haven’t verified) I was allowed on forest roads. (I’m sure there’s a 250-page multi-modal off-road recreation public planning document that took 20 years to write, involved every off road club in creation, is so boring it makes your teeth hurt, and was obsolete the day it was written. I’d need either a local to explain it or a team of lawyers; so I just winged it.) Either way I bumped along roads with stupid names only a GIS database would love; 293-987, 293-887, 293.1, 283-864, and so forth. Fuck if I know where I was.
The best I can say is that I’m a bit of a woodsman and could easily self-navigate home should the need arise. (Also, is there grant money or some sort of incentive to put up as many trail signs as possible? Is that why UTV and snowmobile routes can’t be marked in a coherent overall scheme?)
After a while I was… well I’ve no idea where I was. I had plenty of gas and lots of food and water so it was no big deal.
So I suppose I’d arrived exactly where I intended to go.