We started running into small snow drifts at around 6500 ft. This is where the day got "Adventurous." Our route climbed from where we crossed the North Fork of the Malheur River. It succeeded in landing in the river and luckily Ben jumped out of the truck and ran through the water to save the drone before it went down through the rapids and was lost. What we all thought was Ben doing some fancy flying and trying to get a low level shot, turned into the drone deciding to try and land in the river. That is when things took a turn for the worse. Everything looked good for the first 50 feet or so. After getting some incredible drone footage of everyone crossing the river, Ben decided to try and pull off the incredible feat of filming himself crossing while flying his drone. This would be an incredible camp spot! Also the biggest casualty of the trip happened at this crossing. One person got some awesome drone footage of us crossing here that I will have to get ahold of. We stopped at an awesome spot for lunch at our second water crossing of the day. It was slow going on some more technical trail, but we were fortunate enough to only have to stop and cut a few trees. It was just deep enough to have fun but not too beep that anyone has issues. First order of business was a water crossing of the South Fork of the Malheur River. We headed East out of Seneca and wouldnt hit pavement until we reached the town of Unity for fuel. We were now in the Malheur National Forest. The rain eventually stopped and it was pretty nice for the first half of the day. Oh and I think everyone should have a wife that is willing to climb on top of your lifted vehicle in pouring rain to help put the RTT away. But what do you do? You cant control mother nature so we endure. We woke up on Saturday to pouring rain! Camping in the rain is bad enough, but packing up camp in pouring rain is even harder. I will get those later on when everyones done compiling their footage. Some of the other guys had awesome cameras and even drones. I apologize that I am no photographer and most of my pics are on an iphone and a cannon point and shoot. Just as we had set up camp it started to rain!! We knew we were going to have some rain but the forecast wasnt calling for rain until later in the day Saturday and it was only Friday. It was a nice clear field right on a little creek. The campspot for night #1 was an awesome spot just outside of Seneca. We stopped in the huge metropolis of Seneca and got fuel before heading out to camp. We really didnt want to but we ended up in camp at 7 pm instead of possibly getting in at 10 pm or later. We got close to the end of our route and decided to take a little quicker detour so we could get to camp before dark. It was all about speed at that point as we were hoping to be into camp by 5 pm and we still had a very long way to go. Ouch!!Īfter we got out of the thick stuff the route opened up to beautiful views and vast meadows. We went 7 miles in the 3 hours after lunch. Progress was very slow as every couple hundred feet it seemed like we were cutting trees and pulling them out of the way with winches. We had 4 chainsaws in our group and need them for sure. The high snow fall this year created a lot of dead fall. We were forced to reroute back down the way we came and head south and then east to get around Mt Pisgah.īy the time we got back to the route it was time for lunch!Īfter Lunch the route became more of a trail than a gravel road and since we were the first people on the route for the season we were definitely breaking trail. Although it has been pretty warm the last few weeks, the snow fall this winter was very high and there are spots on the northern facing slopes that still have super deep snow drifts. Our first issues came when trying to get up and over Mount Pisgah. The OBDR follows the "Summit Trail" which is conveniently named because it pretty much follows the highest elevations from peak to peak. The trail climbs out of Prineville up into the Ochoco National Forest and up toward Big Summit Prairie. It was a beautiful sunny day with nice warm weather. The total miles that day was supposed to be 155. We wanted to get a good early start because we knew it would be a long day. We left Prineville at 6:15 am and headed out on Route 4 of the OBDR. We had 9 vehicles and a great group of people. Well as we all know as overlanders, plans dont always go as planned and this trip was no different. Then from Seneca up to the Olive Lake area outside of Granite. The original plan was to go from Prineville to just outside of Seneca. We knew we were pretty early in the season going into this trip but thought we would give it a shot anyway. Well we just got back from a couple days on the OBDR.
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