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Sorry, Grandma

  • Writer: Grace Slaven
    Grace Slaven
  • 2 days ago
  • 6 min read

Are we reckless on our travels? Some would probably say so, especially my poor grandma. Whenever we are on a trip, she waits with patient trepidation for a daily ”We’re still alive!” text. When we stray out of range of cell towers, as we often do, I can count on her “Checking in!” text being the first to appear when we return to civilization. Today’s blog post tells the tale of one of the scariest things we’ve ever done. Sorry, Grandma.

August 29th, 2024- California Day 6

“Are we sure this is a road?” Right on cue, our car bounced over a gravel hump, sending our suitcases flying in the back. I gritted my teeth. Tyler’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel a little more.

“It’s what the GPS says,” he replied, not taking his eyes off the road.

I squinted suspiciously at the GPS. We had only had one bar of signal in Sierra City, a tiny mining town in the middle of the Tahoe National Forest. As soon as we had turned off the Golden Chain Highway, the signal promptly dropped. Now, we were trusting our route, health, and wellbeing to a blue dot on a Google Maps display. 

I was pretty sure we were on a logging road. This in itself didn’t bother me. We had been on logging roads before. Once, we decided to drive down a random logging road in Ohio just to see where it went. We ended up in the thickest forest we had ever encountered. As we bumped along the narrow Ohio road, I had even found myself looking for territorial moonshiners! Logging roads are fun. 

Are there moonshiners in California? If there were, I doubted they were on the road we were currently traveling. It was hardly wide enough for a car. Google Maps said that it would only take 16 minutes for us to travel up Butcher Ranch Road to our trailhead. There, we were hoping to hike five miles up an offshoot of the Pacific Crest trail to see a fire tower on top of a mountain. It was a trail a friend had recently accomplished with her kids. After seeing her spectacular pictures on social media, I was convinced we had to try the trail too.

Now, however, I was having second thoughts. We were 30 minutes into a 16-minute drive, and we hadn’t even made it onto Butcher Ranch Road yet!

 We were climbing up a steep mountain. Our car rocked and lurched as if we were a fishing boat on a chopping ocean. The suitcases banging around in the trunk made me thankful we never travelled with fragile things. How on earth did they get logging trucks back here? Heck, how did my friend manage to get up this road with her kids?

At a fork in the road, a yellow sign warned us about “Rough Road Ahead.” Poison ivy crawled up the signpost, nearly obscuring a black scrawl in the yellow. In Sharpie, someone had scribbled on the sign. It read “Very overgrown. Too narrow.”

What on earth did that mean? Too narrow for what, a semi truck? A normal car? A knot of foreboding was twisting itself in my stomach. There was no place to turn around, however, so onward we pressed. The trees crowded the road, spreading thick roots beneath our tires to make the car jolt. Bushes thrust out branches to scrape along the sides of our rental car. The paint screamed as it was scratched away from the door panels. We were cringing, but still hopeful. Maybe the road would widen soon? 

It was now 50 minutes into a 16-minute drive. We had been tossed around by the rough road so much that I was dizzy. Our car was covered in dust and scratches. I cringed to think about how much Hertz was going to charge us for the damage. But hey, there was a clearing up ahead! Maybe we were almost there! The morning sunlight grew stronger as we emerged from the forest. With a final vengeful scrape, the bushes retreated from their crushing embrace. The view ahead cleared, and my stomach dropped. 

We were on the side of a cliff.

The road was nothing more than an ATV trail now. I was certain no logging truck had ever traveled this narrow path. On one side, it was bordered by a mountainous slope that was one sneeze away from a landslide. The other side dropped steeply into a valley, cushioned by nothing but treetops and rock. There were no guardrails, and I doubted any road crew had touched this road in decades. Heck, the road probably only existed for mule carts to access old mines. This road wasn’t meant for a modern vehicle. 

I was strongly reconsidering our hike. Was it really worth all this? Looking at the map, we had nearly made it to the trailhead. The cursed blue dot that had guided us onto this unforsaken path now stood only a few inches from our destination. It was maddening. Tyler inched forward. The road grew narrower and narrower, pushing us nearer to the precipice. Tyler was cool and collected under the pressure. I wanted to cry. The car stopped. Ahead, a washout had eaten away the road so badly that it simply crumbled down the slope. A hole existed where the passenger tires should drive over. We couldn’t turn around. We couldn’t go forward. We were stuck. 

What to do now? Our hiking trail was agonizingly close. We had deprived ourselves of several hours of sleep just to be able to do this hike. Were we going to have to quit this close to the top? Stubbornly, I yanked on my car door handle and let myself out of the car. I was going to assess this darn road for myself. I swung my car door shut, listening to it echo across the deep blue-hued valley. My toes were precariously close to the crumbling gravel edge of the road. I shimmied along the car’s body until I got clear of the cliff edge. Then I rested my hands on my hips, surveying our situation. 

It wasn’t great. Experimentally, Tyler inched forward in the car. The driver’s side tires crawled up the incline of the earthen wall that pinned us in. The passenger’s tires rolled over washed out crevices. As I stood and watched, Tyler drove over a particularly narrow area. The front passenger tire passed over a washout that had crumbled into empty air. The tire spun listlessly with nothing beneath it. The other three tires kept the vehicle anchored on the road. That was it. If it was going to take three-tire driving to make it to the trailhead, then the trail wasn’t worth it. Collectively, we decided to give up.

But how to get back down the mountain? Tyler only had one option. Drive it in reverse. 

There have been many instances where I have thanked the good Lord for Tyler’s upbringing on a farm. As he cautiously backed down a mountain, my prayers overflowed with gratitude. Thank God Tyler is an excellent driver! If I were in the driver’s seat, I would have simultaneously had a mental breakdown AND backed us over a cliff. I can’t even parallel park. Tyler, evidently, is capable of saving his poor wife’s life while staying cool as a cucumber. Phew. 

He reversed our car all the way down to that yellow sign where somebody had scribbled “Too narrow.” No kidding! In the small, overgrown fork, Tyler shimmied our car around so we could complete the harrowing drive facing the right direction. I don’t think I have ever been so relieved to return to pavement as I was when we resurfaced in Sierra City. What an experience.

We spent the rest of our day in Lassen Volcanic National Park. It was a wonderfully unique park, but to be honest, we were so exhausted by our high-adrenaline experience that we didn’t notice much. We retired early that night to enjoy the comforts of a small cabin in Lassen National Forest. We roasted marshmallows and visited with the deer wandering through our camp. It was magnificently peaceful. After such a harrowing morning, we felt especially grateful to be alive. 



Comments

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Hi, thanks for dropping by!

When Grace was a kid, one of her favorite pastimes was typing up “newspapers” about farm life and sending them to friends and family. As an adult, she’s moved on from writing about baby goats, but she still loves sharing stories with others. When she’s not telling embarrassing stories about herself, she occasionally publishes them here for your entertainment.

Both Grace and Tyler take the photos featured in the blog posts. The best pictures were certainly taken by Tyler, who’s an excellent photographer but doesn’t give himself any credit!

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