You want me to cross that!

Big day in the saddle yesterday exploring the intricate network of logging roads north of Sudbury. The riding was actually fantastic! I had been planning on going into the Ishpatina ridge via the overland route for a few years. The other day I was telling Ryan Atkins about it and he was keen to join me! Sweet! We decided to giver a go early in the season before our lives would be threatened by black flies and Mosquitos. I also had a sneaking suspicion that the water levels may be above the norm for this time of year. Either way it was going to be a good day of training and exploring future route possibilities.

We Drove up Tuesday afternoon and arrived as far as my Matrix would go. We got stopped by a 200m stretch of overflowed river that had the road ahead of us under some serious water. We set camp 24km off the "paved" road (hardly that). We were roughly still 46.5km away from the point at which we were going to be dropping our bikes then only 7 more km's of hiking/running/bushwacking to the summit of Ontario!

We awoke at sun up the next morning with a good frost covering the tent and car. It was a chilly night for May 4th but the sky was clear and the day looked to be great! We hit the trail peddling our bikes at exactly 830am. Anyone that has had to deal with navigating logging roads know what a nightmare it can be. Sometimes your standing on what seems like the most major road you have seen in the last 3hrs and somehow it isn't on the old 50,000 topo map. Other times you expect to find a good road that the map shows and get to that point only to find a scraggly overgrown path.

We managed to trace the original route to the Sturgeon river crossing via 39km of soft muddy logging roads that were definitely not being used anymore. As we neared the point that we so dearly needed to find, we managed to find a beautiful logging highway for us to follow most of the way back to the car! We were not going to have to slog through some of the strangest and weirdest mud that I have ever seen and ridden. It was crazy, you would be riding along on what seemed to be completely dry gravel and then the next thing you knew you and your bike were standing in 18 inches of slop.

We hit the river crossing which was sure to be our achilles heel of the trip at exactly 3hrs after we departed the car. We were met by a large group of ATV'ers that were also hoping on getting across the river that looked about 8ft deep and moving extremely fast. They were locals and seemed to know the area well. Apparently when you don't see the big rock in the middle of the river, you DO NOT CROSS! You will be swept away, as the fellow gent proceeded to ramble off stories of guys who thought they could get across in the past and suffered a ATV loss or two.

After a brief visit with the friendly Quaders we decided to head back to the car via the Stoobe rd route. It ended up being roughly a hour faster via the route home vs the route there.

So all in all we didn't tag the top of the ridge, we got pretty close. We figured after we crossed the Sturgeon river then road for 6.5km dropped the bikes then ran/bushwacked the remaining 7km to the summit we were only 2.5hrs from the top. We hit a major road block (literally) and there was no way we were going to get across the river, it did happen to cross my mind a few times...