Usal Road
Usal Road: Famed in the Southern Humboldt area for swallowing vehicles; for being challenging even to Toyota 4x4's.....a place where tow trucks do not go, and marked on the map as 'Not a shortcut!' as it leads from near Whitethorn to the uppermost reach of Highway 1 (the alternative being driving all the way around to 101).
We have known of this road for some time now, and it has loomed in our
imaginations as a challenge. Indeed, when I asked of the locals about it,
especially with regard to split-window buses, the responses were, if not
downright derisive, somewhat negative, accompanied by chortling.So Michele and I set out once again in our '66 Westy to conquer this unholy passage through the southern reaches of the King Range. With chainsaw, 2 come-a-longs, cables, rope, chains pre-mounted on two spares, axes, shovels, extra gas, a couple short 2x6's, and various and sundry trip supplies, we headed from our house at 12:30. I estimated that the trip would take between 3 and 12 hours, depending on conditions.
It was not without trepidation that we passed the signage on the northern
end of the road: 'Road not maintained for winter travel', Road closed to
through traffic', etc. at 1:00 p.m. While it was not winter any longer, we
had had a record rainstorm for this time of year two days hence: 7 inches
or so in a day, and while keeping the dust from being a problem, it
increased the likelihood of meeting up with fearsome mud, ruts, and
washouts.The first part of the road, mostly uphill, was fun, but not overtly challenging. There was a series of 'rolling dips' which made for some interesting roller-coaster effects, but otherwise, this was simply another country lane; fairly smooth, with a minimum of erosion, and getting more picturesque as we climbed. The sun was out in full force that day, and the cool coastal breeze made for optimum driving conditions. We had feared that the forest on the eastern side of the road would be scarred by heavy logging, but although it had some marks of earlier harvesting, the forest seemed to be pretty happy. On the other side of the road, California State Parks boundaries were marked, and smatterings of endless ocean and sky through the dense foliage were glimpsed.
Once the ridgetop was gained, we started into a slightly more interesting part of the road, as the lack of proper drainage made itself apparent, and puddles and ruts began to appear with increasing frequency and depth. Some of the puddles were quite deep, and it was fun gunning through them....I didn't smash into any, being wary of hidden rocks and ridges, but a couple times, when the muddy water came pouring over the crown of the bus and through the wing vents, I reflexively floored the accellerator, as it is best to keep momentum up in quagmires of unknown depth and gooiness. In an effort to keep the windscreens clean and dry for the video camera, I started skirting the puddles as much as possible: One such puddle, being skirted, turned out to be MUCH deeper than expected, and with a sickening lurch, the bus skewed and dropped the driver's side about a foot....the resulting angle was quite alarming, but other than making for some interesting footage of the door panel and dash, with an accompanying gasp from Michele, there were no ill effects from aforesaid puddle.
The ruts from water runoff were sometimes deep, and crossed the road from time to time, necessitating careful negotiation to minimize impromptu wheel alignment adjustments, and an occasional important decision as to which side of the rut best to travel on (or straddle) as the rut continues down the road around a bend, and branches out here and there....it is good to not be on the side which opens up and drops into a gully! Also, since I was frequently veering around blind corners on the wrong side of the road, I was constantly on edge....expecting and being vigilant for the sudden appearance of oncoming maniacs in trucks or on motorcycles.
There is enough travel on this road to keep the large woody debris out of the way. Never did have to use the chainsaw, shovel, or axes....but there were signs of someone else so equipped....a couple times, large trees had fallen across the road, and had I been in a pickup, I would have been collecting some good firewood along the way!
Through twists and turns, up and down, and back up again, always twisting and turning, dodging holes and ruts and branches we went. Caroling all the way (not). It was turning out to be a great adventure, but not the fearsome challenge to vehicle and driver that we had feared. We continued on, and approximately an hour since the start of the road itself, and 10 miles in, we came around a downhill bend and saw someone waving their arms 'Stop!' next to a Toyota 4x4 and a couple motorcycles. Uh-oh!
We rolled up to the clump of rapscallions and their vehicles (3 or 4 'cycles, and 2 Toyotas, mud be-splattered), and the first words out of this young whipper-snapper's mouth were: "You are NOT going to make it, dude, no way! Unless you've got some super traction all-wheel-drive set-up on this rig!" Very cheerily said, as they had come up from the southern end of the road, and were having an excellent outing themselves. Their trucks were packed with camping gear, and they looked to be taking a short break....or something. Anyway, they told us about the road ahead, and why we wouldn't make it through....although they had the greatest respect for us for making it this far, and loved seeing an old bus wending its way down this road. They appraised my preparatory gear with enthusiasm, and then said that maybe we would make it, but do we have a week? (Insert some more of that good-natured chortling). One guy had a video camera with a shot of their truck going through the first of the two major obstacles that now lay in our path: A puddle, approximately 30 feet long, with no way around it. This was a deep one, they said, with ruts a foot-and-a-half deep lying between gooey ridges under the innocuous brown surface. His video, which I got a shot of on my own camera, depicted a 4x4 gleefully plunging and splashing through the middle of the puddle like a wild brumby, with the sound of his tortured engine as accompaniment.
If we made it through that one, another few miles would bring us to The Biggie: A 300-ft uphill section of liquid earth, deeply scarred by numerous passings, garnished by a chuckling rivulet which ran down the middle of the whole mess. Another car lay alongside the lower section of the muddy ruts, abandoned by its owners some time ago after vain attempts to free it. Our friends had had some trouble coming down that slime-hill....we would be hard-pressed to ascend it, they attested. Especially with the external oil cooler and filter setup I have underneath the bus.....that, they swore, would be the first component to go!
Pride, at this point, was not an issue. Not only did I not want to exchange my stout walking shoes for heavy boots, but I did not want to break anything on my bus....or worse: leave it! We bade them farewell, and told them we'd go take a look at these heinous obstacles and at least get a picture of what we turned back for fear of. I'm sure glad we saw them when we did! Had we not had that conversation, we would have likely plunged into that big puddle with no forewarning, and found ourselves stuck fast, belly-deep in submerged muddy clay.
We got to the puddle, and stopped. Now for some serious decision-making! It looked benign, but the video we saw a few moments ago exposed the fact that it was a hungry maw spanning the width of the road. I grabbed a sturdy stick, and began the process of sounding the depths.....noting points I would definitely not like to get a wheel into, and feeling for the width and shape of the ridges. After about 15 minutes or so of walking both sides of this landlocked sea, probing with my stick in an attempt to memorize the details of the floor, during which I consulted with my copilot, Michele, we made the decision to go for it, knowing that if we made it through, and the second hurdle turned us back, we'd have to run this puddle again.
With my pounding heart in my throat, I buckled myself into the driver's
seat, and with Michele shooting video from the other side, I headed into the
mud. The plans I made for this crossing were simple: Based on the width of
the bus, if I keep the passenger-side wheels on the narrow shelf on the
right side of the puddle, the left wheels would ride along the edge of the
nearest submerged ridge, which continued all the way along the length of the
obstacle. As I got into the puddle, which I approached in medium-range 1st
gear, I felt the driver's side falling away as the ridge I had planned to
stay on seemed to collapse under the tires. At an exhilarating angle,
canted sharply to the left, I poured on the gas, and without a hitch, the
bus was through!Now, with a strong feeling of invigoration and thrill-high, we continued southward towards The Biggie. The road was similar to as it was before, yet a little more rutted and wet. One spot we came to was a muddy, rutted stretch approximately 100 yards long....stopped to walk around that one, too, made plans for how best to not get stuck in this morass of boot-sucking mud, and ran through it without a problem. Love those tires! Pity that Michele was in the bus with the camera, as it would have looked really cool from the outside!
After following a wetly running ditch down the center of the road, which I thought for sure would have a small lake at the bottom, we started uphill again, and before long, the beginning of The Biggie hove into view, complete with the abandoned LeBaron off to one side. Just as we approached the Chrysler, however, we noted another vehicle in the midst of the ruts, with a person at the front of it, looking somewhat perturbed. They were coming from the other direction, and as they were going downhill, slipped sideways into some of the deeper ruts, and had to dig themselves out. I parked the bus, and we went to speak with them...they were just then becoming unstuck, and I appraised their rig to see what our chances of ascending the muddy hill were. Our tires were much better for this sort of thing, as they had on medium-tread M/S tires, but they did have four-wheel-drive on their side....it was a Tahoe or something like that...an SUV. Anyway, after backing up to find a space sufficient for them to pass, we set about the 'appraisal of the challenge' process.
The first third of the ascent would be pretty easy: There were fairly wide
ridges on which to drive. However, there was a large dip smack dab in the
center of the road which would necessitate being fully on one side or the
other....I chose the right side, as the left became a big mess, and the nice
ridges were dug away, and the earth was very gooey. After the dip, the ruts
became wider, and the edges of the ridges were softer. I could see where
the Tahoe had slipped into the ruts, and as I walked along the ridges, the
mud gave away beneath my feet. There were many sticks and lumps of wood
placed into the ruts at the deeper spots, and after making my route plan, we
started to increase our chances by moving brush and sticks to spots
strategically located on my planned path. I made the decision to swap the
rear wheels with the chained-up tires on the roofrack. Good decision! It
took us about an hour to make plans, prepare the road for traction and
change the wheels. Now my heart was REALLY in my throat!With Michele about two-thirds of the way up with the camera, I started the ascent. The first part was no problem...it wasn't that steep there, and the bus simply clambered up. I appreciated the feeling of power and traction that the chains bequeathed, and summoning more power from the engine, hit the first of the hurdles: The dip. I could feel the front right tire leave the ground as I exited the dip, and the rear slid a bit, but still, I was on track. The next part was the tricky bit: One error could have me stuck in a rut.
I made it up another third of the way, and then, whether it was
error or just the fact that I was trying to maintain a line on soft ridges
the bus was barely wide enough to straddle, the left wheels almost
simultaneously slid into the middle rut. Gamely, I spurred on our loyal
steed, but it seemed that she wanted to rest a bit, and wallow in the mud on
a sunny afternoon....Checking the oil pressure gauge to make sure I hadn't left any important components in the mud, thereby spewing the lifeblood of our engine into the churned muck, I tried a couple more times to power up and out of the rut, but to no avail. "Well!" I said, as I exited the slanting Volkswagen, "Now we get to see how well our cables and come-a-longs work!"
The front wheel was set hard against a shelf of packed mud, and the beam was totally inaccessible, so I managed to manuever backwards a bit, and then forward, thereby lifting the front end out of the pit. I wrapped my cable around the beam, connected two come-a-longs in series, and then another cable, which I wrapped around a handy fir tree, which is probably rueing the day that it decided to grow there.
The first attempts to get out of the rutwere
semi-successful.....we gained about 5 feet, but were unable to get out
of the hole. I used engine power to move as far forward as possible, and to
get the front wheels pointed in the correct direction, and then took up the
slack on the cable. This time, I had Michele behind the wheel holding the
front wheels turned in the direction I wanted to go while I cranked both
come-a-longs to their limits, and then, with Michele standing by on the
cable to take up slack, I miraculously powered up the rest of the muddy,
sloped rut of a road, and we were free!We packed up the sullied gear, and stowed it in the cargo area. I inspected the underside of the bus to make sure all was well, especially the oil filter which had been smushed deeply into the mud, but no damage was to be seen....even our tailpipe was still there! And on our way we went, knowing that we had gotten through the worst of it (because of the information gleaned from that band of friendly hooligans earlier).
More views of valleys to the east, and ocean to the west, as the road plunged and twisted down and around the coastal range. More ruts and puddles, some slight manuevering challenges, but nothing to be concerned about. At one point, a fallen tree extended its slim branches out onto the road, thus affording us the chance to get some gratuitous machete action shots on video, but other than that, our drive was uneventful. From high atop one cliff, we were rewarded by a beautiful view of Usal Beach as the valley through which runs Usal Creek opened up to the sea, and shortly after that, we dropped into Usal Campground, which was teeming with life..... campers and their families were gathered there, this veritable oasis of civilization, and there were a couple roads leading out onto the beach, where we had lunch overlooking the mouth of Usal Creek and the beach.
We saw a neat old Ford fording the creek from the other side of the beach, and there were people lounging in the sand, hanging out by their vehicles, and flying kites. There are some awesome views from the high points on the south end of the beach, and all-in-all, it would make a great destination for a small horde of bus travelers.
On top of a bluff overlooking the beach, I removed the chains from the tires, and it was there that I noted the sad loss of our tailpipe. It was on there when we left The Biggie, but somewhere up on Usal Road, it now poses both a curiosity and a danger to the next travelers. I still have regrets about not going back to get it.
Another 5 miles of Usal Road now lay between us and Highway 1. For several
of those miles, we were directly behind that old Ford pickup (a nicely
preserved, albeit modified '60 4x4). Finally, at 6:30, we reached Highway
1, and turned east towards Highway 101. Highway 1 is really fun in that
area (as it is in most), and we ran it to the tune of frequent backfires
due to the lack of tailpipe and with the slanting sunlight lighting the way.
At 8:00 we arrived at home, and exhausted but exhilarated and triumphant, we
watched some of our day on video, and ate ice cream. What a nice finish to
a great day!Usal Road, which is a mere 27 miles long, took us 5.5 hours to traverse, including a couple short breaks, some hazard assessment, and a couple decently intense challenges turned out not to be the nightmare it was made out to be, although I could see that doing it in the dead of winter, like as a leg of the Shasta Trip, could be considered inadviseable. We are exceedingly happy that we forged on through the supposedly insurmountable hurdles in our path, rather than wimping out! I wish we had procured the contact info for those guys we saw, so we could let them know we made it!
Total time: Home and back: 7.5 hours
Total miles: 96
Usal Road length: 27 miles
Average speed on Usal Road: 4.9 mph (including stops and stuckage)
Nominal driving speed on Usal Road: 10-15 mph
What's next, we wonder......?
Gene Cornelius
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