Independence Day ORV Run
at Ahtanum State Forest
Hosted by Eastern Washington Off Road
Report and photos by Clay Graham / Eastern Washington Off Road

On July 4th, 2008 we met at Mischief Maker’s camp at Tree Phones around 10 AM. Our group was; Mason – ATV, Sparky – ATV, Test Dummy – Dirt bike, Mischief Maker – ATV, Ceg & family – XJ.

We headed up the Ahtanum Mid Fork Road and stopped on top of Darland Mountain for a picture. We headed down the North Slope of Darland Mountain, turn onto the Blue Lake 4×4 Trail, and stopped at Blue Lake for a short break. We watch the 4x4xNorthwest club come in from Rimrock and then the Timber Tamers.

We headed up 4W615 onto FS1020. A few miles down we played in a few snow drifts and stopped for the view off Foundation Ridge.

We headed back up FS1020 through the snow again. Mischief Maker had fun showing off to my kids in the Tweety Jeep.

We are dropping down 4W615 from FS1020 toward Blue Lake. Test Dummy crashed the bike (Roll Over’s bike) in one of the many rocky areas. He only broke of some plastic.

Our next stop was at Snow Cabin Campground so the ladies could use the out house. The boys played in the Forest since the Creek was closed because of Bull Trout BS.

We took the North Fork Road down and used the McLaine Canyon Road to get back to the Ahtanum Mid Fork Road and up to Tree Phones. Fatboy met us there in his TJ.

Next we headed down the Ahtanum Mid Fork Road and up the McLaine Canyon Road and onto the Whites Ridge 4×4 Trail. We went up to find a good place to see the fire works. We decided Make-Out Point would work.

We ran to the top end of the Whites Ridge 4×4 Trail to kill some time.
On the way back down we stopped to read a No Quads Sign on the Grey Rock Trail.

Next we went on down to Norm’s Check-point to look down at the area around Tree Phones. You could see Shawn Montee logged a lot of the area we were closed out of in September 2005. Some quads were in the closed area. They may have not known it is closed if they came into the closed area from one of the trails above. The only closed signs I have seen are at the bottom of the road they are going down. I have talked to the DNR about this problem and I was told they don’t want ugly closed signs hanging everywhere. I say signs are education and ticket the ones that don’t care to read the signs instead of ticketing people for being in non-posted areas.

We headed on back up to Make-out Point to watch the fire works. We could see the ones at the fair grounds in Yakima and the ones at Legends in Toppenish. They were really small from Whites Ridge.

This was a great day thanks to the people that came.

Here are some photos of the EWOR Independence Day ORV Run: