2018 4WDrive Overland SE - June

We drove a great twisting mountain road down to the
highway and cruised our way to Ellensburg with smoke getting
thicker by the minute. Connecting to some Wi-Fi at a Dairy
Queen, we could now reevaluate the situation. The local forestry
news had reported that the fire situation was bordering on crisis.
Nearly every mountain range had a fire burning out of control
and the air quality was getting toxic. By some miracle our next
leg was clear, an easy climb over the grassy hills of Umptanum
ridge, followed by a steep climb over Cleman Mountain. The
second half of the day was looking up.
The smoke cleared as we climbed out of Ellensburg, and the
sobering sight of massive wild fires burning on the side of three
mountains dropped my jaw in awe. It looked like volcanoes spewing
ash into the air.
Arriving at the entrance to the Umptanum pass, we aired down,
and proceeded into the wide-open hills. The road was extremely
wide and we had vision for kilometres, until some crazy driver in a
Subaru passed us rather recklessly in a great cloud of dust. My first
thought was it must have been a rally driver getting some practice,
with such a wide and smooth road. Nope, I was wrong.
The Subaru pulls Blake over and the two get into a rather
long chat. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, likely another
friendly local giving us some helpful advice. Then the Subaru
backs up to the Cherokee and an arrogant little mirrored aviator
sunglass-wearing dude, proceeds to lambaste me. He identified
himself as a volunteer police deputy; I will refer to him as
Deputy Cranky Pants. Well, Deputy Cranky Pants goes on the
craziest of all power trips, spewing gibberish for the first three
minutes, something about speeding, radioing ahead to the police
up the road to arrest us, then accuses Blake of doing 70 mph.
“Whoa, whoa, that bike doesn’t even do 70! You go ahead and
call your buddy up ahead and get him to arrest us.” I was in no
mood to take any more abuse, but it was time to exit without risk
of upsetting an already irate American who likely had several
firearms within reach.
The Umptanum Pass was a fun, rather wide-open gravel road;
however once we passed through a gate into the Oak Creek
Wildlife Area we finally got our first proper off-road track.
The steep climb up the valley wall was on a road base of jagged
rocks the size of softballs. Blake, with his brand new Progressive
suspension installed, blazed off into the distance, while I had
to stop, air down and raise the Grand Cherokees suspension
to “Off-Road II”, as high as the air bags would let me go. The
rough jagged road through the wide-open scenic vistas slowly
transformed to a more challenging washout track through the
higher altitude forest.
The challenging terrain was just what I needed after all the
frustrations. Beautiful views and quaint winding roads are
great, but I needed to be challenged, and Cleman Mountain was
doing just that. We worked our way up to the peak to reveal
a magnificently clear view of the whole Cascade Range. After
so much disappointment, we were finally rewarded after a
successful climb.
We decided to celebrate that night by getting a motel and
The trail up Cleman Mountain was
tough on tires – and backs.
The ridgeline along Cleman Mountain
was the most scenic vistas.
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