There were 3 of us on quads that went on this Divide Ridge run. Jake, Hank and myself (Ceg). We started out at Tree Phones Camp Ground. We were looking for places to wheel the trucks for the Labor Day Runs. We headed up to Darland Mountain past the cut off to the North Fork Ahtanum Rd. We were looking for the 615 and thought we were on it. No signs saying what trail we were on. We went until the trail looked like it stopped on the edge of a rocky drop off. We went back down the trail a little and found a trail that started going down the mountain on the Ahtanum side. This trail was very steep. We went sliding down part of the trail. This couldn't of been the 615 because we ran into the North Fork Ahtanum Rd. at the bottom of the mountain.

Since we were down on the North Fork road we decided to hit the 615 at the Blue Lake cut off and head back to Darland Mountain. This part of 615 wasn’t bad to up to 640. This is as far as we went.

We had lunch there and decided to take 615 the other way past Blue Lake and run 613 to 608 at Louie Way Gap. We wanted to see if the 608 trail could be use to get from Rimrock up to the Ahtanum with trucks.

After dropping down the mountain down some very steep trails, we decided to turn around. The trail was getting steeper down hill. I think we were close to Long Lake but we did not know if we had the fuel to get back up 608 and 613 to get back to the truck so we turned around.

Us at our turn around point of the 608

The climb out was hard. We had some very steep climbs to get back up to 613. One of the climbs was so bad it took Hank three times to get to the top. He didn’t get to ride all the way up. I had a problem when I was climbing the same hill because I caught a rock that made my front tires come off the ground. The quads front end jumped over a log. I couldn’t go up any more because the log was taking me into a tree. I had to back down a little to get off the log. Hank helped me by hooking up my winch to a tree. I backed down enough to get off the log. I had enough traction to go on up without using the winch, but we used it anyway to be on the save side. The front didn’t want to stay on the ground. Kind of Scary!

Ceg trying to climb 608

Caution!! Don't tie off your winch to this stump.
I think it was breaking off when I was winching up my quad.

Jake came up with his 4x4 and he did well. The quad jumped in the air a few times when going over the rocks. After we got back up to the 613 crossing, we took C1000 to the top of the ridge to the Strobach Mountain cutoff. This was the first for me taking this trail. It was rocky but nice. We stop on Strobach Mountain for one last look off of Divide Ridge.

Strobach Mountain

The view from Strobach Mountain. Rimrock Lake and Mt. Rainier.

After a short break we head down the 613 back toward the truck parked at Tree Phones.

It was still a long ways away. Hank was close to empty by the time we got to Darland Mountain. Lucky we had the fuel pod. We rode 50.1 miles on our adventure. It was a blast. Scary too! The 615 is still to be rode and the rest of the 608. We will skip those two trails on Labor Day weekend, but plan to run the Southwest part of 613 to Strobach Mountain.

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