Shasta Snow Trip '08 - A Report From Paul Cullen
The Shasta Snow Trip, every year it is plugged both on the website (www.shastasnowtrip.com) and on www.thesamba.com for several months prior to the trip itself, this year, the trip had its largest turn out of buses in the eight years it has run, a total of 21 split screen buses turned up to start the rally one cold night in early February.
The trip itself was borne from one man's necessity to get to Shasta City one Xmas 9 years ago, the man in question is ex American Marine, Brian Piercy. Brian hails from Northern California, and one Xmas with his split screen single cab and a trails bike strapped on the flat bed, he achieved the impossible he made the several hundred mile journey over closed roads and trails against exceptionally adverse weather conditions to his destination, he should never of made it on his own, to be honest he should never have attempted it on his own…why did he do it? Why not! would be the answer. Brian is one of the worlds great unsung adventurers, having spent some time in his company over the last three years, it is rare that I have come across a man with such a burning desire to do everything "they" say he can't, sometimes I wonder if he is genuinely mad or a true genius, I remember reading a quote many years ago, along the lines of… "Madness is the mindspring of genius" well if that is true then it is applicable to Brian.
Brian has a fire burning inside him, one of his main reasons for existence is to extract and re-instate split buses back into circulation, he alone is responsible for saving and giving new leases of life to at least several dozen split screen buses, previously abandoned and left to rot into the earth.
Every year he will extract a bus from a forest or of a mountain and then set himself a completely ridiculous deadline for making the vehicle roadworthy, usually 3 or 4 days!
Also at this point I must note that there are various other people who have come on board to help form the Shasta Snow Trip, there are 7 people in particular who must be given credit at this point for running the trip alongside Brian and ensuring that everyone makes it home alive. First up would be Aaron & Emily, trip veterans and long time friends of Brian, residents of Santa Rosa, they have drove in every one of the 8 trips to date, Gene & Michele Cornelius from www.backroadbus.com again veterans of every trip, Richard Kimborough of www.rustybus.com a long time hardcore split bus driver and trip veteran, Hippy Tim and Britt Grannis must also get a mention at this point again both long serving Shasta Snow Trippers. I am fortunate enough to call all seven of these people along with Brian as my friends, without them, the trip wouldn't exist and I wouldn't get to go on it.
The 2008 story began for me leaving Ireland on a plane destined for Frankfurt, a swift change in Germany and is was en-route to San Francisco, 11 hours later I dragged myself off the plane and headed through customs and immigration. Once through immigration I was greeted with the infectious laugh and smile of Mr Britt Grannis ( if you ever meet Britt you will know what I mean about his laugh!) Britt had turned up smiling with food in hand for the weary traveller, after spending an hour catching up and grabbing something to eat and drink, Britt stuck me on the bus to Santa Rosa with the message that Aaron was waiting for me at the other end. Two hours later I arrived in Santa Rosa, by this point I was completely burnt out I had been awake for 36 hours and was starting to feel the effects of sleep deprivation coupled with a different time zone.
Once I got off the bus seeing Aaron and the Pirate bus lifted my spirits and temporarily displaced my tiredness, it had been three years since I had last shared Aaron's company and it was if it was yesterday, its always the same with my VW buddies the world across, no matter how long it has been its as if we only finished our previous face to face conversation the day before, nice, and something that always reminds me of how important these people are both in my life and also in the global VW community as a whole. We spent an hour driving and catching up through Santa Rosa and onwards to Forestville.
Now Forestville has to be the most bizarre place (and I have been to a few) I have ever visited, how do I describe this place…Ewok village sound familiar to anyone? Basically as the name states it's a village in a forest, everyone lives in cabins built up in the trees, simple as that, by now, nothing was going to shock me!
Just as we pulled into Forestville Brian sped past in his pick up, the brakes went on the tyres smoked to a halt and the screech of a rapid reverse broke the late night stillness
" Hey Cuchullainfromireland Dude!" exclaimed Brian in a way only he can, he explained that he was heading to pick Erica up from the airport and would be home shortly, with that he headed off into the night.
Aaron dropped me at Brian's treehouse and helped up the steep stairs with my luggage, once we had got into the cabin, Aaron bid me farewell as he still had trip preparations of his own to complete prior to us leaving in just over 48 hours time.
I opened a can of cider and kicked back with Brian's cats until Erica and him returned, upon their return more cider was consumed and a bottle or two of red wine appeared, by this time it was 3am I had now been awake for close to forty one hours, in a drunken haze we decided that in order to get ahead of the game of the re-instatement of "The Airport bus" we should descend from the trees in the rain to fit the engine…by 5am I had made it to bed.
The next day we were up and out the door at 9am, Erica and myself headed into Santa Rosa to get supplies for the trip and glass for the bus, the bus had side windows, but Brian refused point blank to humiliate the airport bus by putting it back into commission with gaolise windows, he wanted plain glass, so plain glass we got cut in town.
That night we ate well and worked on at the bus until 9 or 10pm, at this point it was decided to get some sleep in order to facilitate the predicted 5am start the next morning, 5am came far to quickly for my liking!
What proceeded was one of the longest days of my life working in the rain at the bus, we worked hard, we broke stuff, we argued and we fought, but by 10pm that night the airport bus was assembled, new glass in place, a cab floor constructed of wood, seats, curtains, re-built brakes, a 1776 engine fitted, tyres chained and on with the roof rack, wiring sorted out and an accelerator pedal stuck back together again with jb weld, if this sounds like abject chaos, well trust me it doesn't sound half as chaotic as it actually was!
So here it was, a bus built in literally three days, it hadn't driven under its own power in 20 or 30 years…was there time to test drive it to iron out any issues? Ehhmm no, we packed it and hit the road with jubilant cheers…
We drove through the night, through Northern California, steadily climbing into the snow line, upon our arrival at the top end of Bartlett Springs Road, this is where the fun started, the temperature plummeted and we hurtled up and over the mountain on snow covered backroad trails, once down the other side we saw the caravan of 17 other buses…we had arrived..many many hours late, but we had arrived, actually making the start of the Shasta Snow trip is an accomplishment in itself, I have learnt that one piece of wisdom through my previous experiences of the trip.
I climbed out of the airport bus and was greeted with open arms from Hippy Tim, Tim I had befriended the first time I did the trip in 2005 and a better hippy you will never find, a funny and exceptionally kind and talented hardcore split bus driver.
After a quick catch up round the fire I crashed on the front seat of the airport bus aware that we were leaving in 3 hours time on the trip proper.
I awoke to the sound of engines running in the cold morning air, I rose quickly and packed my sleeping bag, reached for my toothbrush and a bottle of water, once up I found out that my friends from Arizona had only rolled into camp 20 minutes before I got up, they had put a bus off road into a ditch and it had taken 5 hours to extract it!
Brian fired up the petrol generator strapped to the roof of the airport bus and turned on his spotlight, from aloft the rack he held council over us all and conducted the impromptu drivers meeting, there are videos of it on www.youtube.com for those that care to go looking, basically he welcomed us all, gave us a list of 5 or 6 place names along the route and warned everyone of the dangers of the trip we were all about to undertake. With the drivers meeting behind us, the buses were lined up and the occupants on the opposite side of the road, when our fearless leader shouted "GO!" Everyone ran in Le Mans fashion across the road and jumped into the vehicles, engines fired and the trip was underway, back up Bartlett Springs Road we went, within 10 minutes of hitting the trail we had hit snow, deep snow, it had snowed heavily over night and it had reached the point that chains would be a necessity, just prior to stopping to chain up a guy jumped out of the hedge in front of us trying to flag us down, we were past him before we realised that he was there, Sean from Huntington Beach was behind us and stopped for the guy, it turned out that he and his mate had flipped their 4x4 into a river the day previous, had to swim out of the sunken car and had been wandering without food and jackets in the snow, they had covered about 15 or 20 kms on foot and frostbite had staret to set into one of them, Sean immediately stuffed them both into his bus and whisked them off to the nearest town to safety.
At this point it dawned in us all the severity of the conditions, here were two young men that would most certainly have died if they had been on the mountain much longer…food for thought.
Once chained up, we started the slow ascent once more, half way to the summit Cory broke a rear axle on his 1960 panel, it was decided that everyone else would go on past us and Aaron & Emily. By now I was travelling in the infamous Area 51 Bullet Bus with Britt and Rauiri, once everyone had headed off upwards into the snow we used the Bullet Bus and the Pirate Bus to tow Cory's panel bus up the mountain over the summit and down the other side, this took nearly 6 hours, at one point we hooked the Pirate Bus to the Bullet Bus and it in turn too the Panel bus, this haphazard train made it up the steepest part of the snow cover summit.
Once off Bartlett Springs we hooked the broken panel to an a-frame and towed it to the safety of Christopher Moores ranch in Willits for a drum to drum transaxle replacement, it was here that we caught up with some of the rest of the pack, the Rustybus was up on a jack in the middle of town having reduction box bearings replaced, several other buses were parked nearby at various eateries.
As soon as we were all ready to hit the road again, Richard Kimborough threw me the keys to the Rusty Bus, I was tired, but nowhere near as tired as he, so with renewed enthusiasm I jumped into the drivers seat, in the 4th bus of the trip for me!
We took it in turns driving late into the Friday night, stopping only briefly as we were passing the Avenue of the giants, and tired as we were it was decided to stop to admire the Giant Redwoods, these trees are a true pleasure to view, awesome to the extreme in their size, there was a special feeling in the forest, a good feeling, one of a land from before our time, we relaxed for 30 minutes and then headed back to the buses to try and cover some more ground.
We drove until midnight or so and stopped at Willow Creek for fuel and food, a decision was made here that some people were going to find a motel and get some sleep, now with my second wind I decided to press on along with Gene, Michelle, Ryan, Cherie and my co-pilot Richard, we bid what would turn out to be our final farewell to the rest and again we headed off into the snow and over several mountain passes, driving was challenging to say the least, the snow came down harder and harder, the visability started dropping dramatically, we were down to 45mph and heading over possibly the second or third summit when I realised Ryan was heading for the cliff edge, I grabbed the CB and screamed "RYAN WAKE UP!!!" the single cab swerved and headed back towards the centre of the road, we all pulled over and climbed out of our trusty steeds and stood in the sub zero temperatures desperately fighting tiredness and the imposing darkness, we couldn't stay up here all night so we had to press on, several stops later we rolled triumphantly into Shasta City in the early hours of the Saturday morning, a whole 24hours after we had set off from Bartlett Springs Road..
Beds were found, I don't even remember taking my boots off, nor going to sleep, but sleep I did.
Saturday morning I arose to see the buses buried by the overnight snowfall, breakfast was sought from a small Italian restaurant, owned by a lady determined to feed up the travelling adventurers for another day or three. After breakfast we assembled 13 or 15 buses into a caravan and headed off towards Castle Lake. Castle Lake is a frozen lake we traditionally go ice fishing on, but this season, with the dump of snow Shasta had endured so far since the turn of the new year, not even the snow ploughs had made it up to Castle Lake, the road up there is 8 miles long, we made 6.5 miles, further than the plough men, further than the 4x4 drivers, further than anyone, we stood again jubilant at having proved the durability and driveability of these 40 year old buses, take your modern technology and shove it, a split bus will get pretty much anywhere!
Once at the point where we could travel no further…now came the fun part, we got to drive down the mountain slopes we had spent all day ascending!!! Buses hurtling downwards on full opposite lock, bouncing of snow banks, steering from the rear, fun was what we sought on these closed roads and fun is what we had!
Saturday night we partied hard sharing pictures and stories with each other, each team had a different story to relate as after the Le Mans'esque start the trip had exploded like a nail bomb and had become very much every bus or pod of buses for themselves.
A dampener soon brought us all back to earth in the form of another reminder of how dangerous the trip could be, the Bullet Bus was on its side 80 miles away from us, all that was stopping it from falling 80 feet down a ravine into the chilled creek beneath was a tree…maybe it was a good thing we had stopped in the Avenue of the Giants the night before, maybe now the trees we had admired, had just saved some of our friends lives…a chill ran through everyone on a what if basis.. the party continued slightly more subdued.. until the arrival of our fearless leader and Erica, they had had an adventure all of their own, but had made it safely to the city in the clouds, for the first time in 8 years we had beaten Brian to Shasta!!
Late on the Saturday night we left the party and headed back to our lodgings where a late night conversation about Sasquatch took us well into the wee small hours again.
Sunday morning we packed up and blew town, on the way home, I was now riding with Mike Wood from the band Truckers on Speed and his co-pilot Bailey, both from Arizona, on the way home we met up with Britt and the gang in the recovered bullet bus and Aaron and Em in the Pirate bus, we caravanned back through Nor Cal heading through Sacremento, past Stockton to Britt's house in Valley Springs, once home we had no time for rest as Mike had to pull his engine to replace a broken oil cooler, we chilled in Britt's garage and kept the craic flowing until Mike had done with his engine pull and oil cooler swap, again late into the night sleep came easy.
The very next day we arose, showered and I was back on the plane destined for Germany once more and then home to Ireland, the trip a haze, I sat at home back on the Causeway Coast and logged into my emails, past the point of exhaustion, if it wasn't for the photographs I would question if a trip as crazy as this had ever happened….
Check out www.shastasnowtrip.com for further pics and videos of the trips over the last eight years, just don't expect any updates this side of Easter about this years trip… we are all in hibernation getting a well earned rest.
Thanks go to everyone on the trip and especially those named in this text, along with the rest of the newts, and all my friends from Rule6 and The Irish Dub Alliance who gave encouragement and lent me arctic equipment which ensured my warm and dry survival of this years trip!
Someday throw caution into the wind, grab your passport and jump on a plane, take a gamble… as the bumper sticker states..
The Meaning of life…is To Live it!
Paul Cullen
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