Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge Hike after Horrible Day!

3.6 miles of hiking • 250' elevation gain •

A somewhat nice ending to an absolutely HORRIBLE day!

We had originally decided on hiking to Red Mt., in Indian Heaven, at the beginning of the day. We were going to start at the Falls Creek Horse Camp off of NF65. When we were about 1/2 mile from the destination, my wife complained that she was pressing down on the gas pedal but the car wasn't accelerating. After about 100ft she stopped the car, and then smoke started billowing from under the hood! She turned off the engine and I opened the hood to find smoke rising from down low. There were no people on the road, and I was thankful we had the satellite phone to call for a tow truck.

Within about 10 minutes after the phone call, two guys in a large pickup stopped and offered to look over the car. The transmission oil had bled out on the ground and all over the exhaust. A liitle bit of history. This is our Subaru that had just been returned from the Alpine Auto body shop about a week earlier! They had replaced the damaged radiator, but NOT any hoses!!! We found this out after the fact. About 1.5 hours later the tow truck arrived from Carson (we had used this service before when our truck got stuck in high snow at this same horse camp!)

A nice older gentleman got out and loaded our Forester onto the truck. He couldn't take us to Vancouver and dropped us off at the Texaco in Stevenson. In Stevenson, we called AAA, which we joined after our Suburban in high snow experience! In about one hour he arrived and loaded our car onto his tow truck. He was an extremely nice person and actually offered to stop and let us hike, or pickup ice cream, since it was supposed to be a Mothers day hike! The tow Truck Driver worked at Riverside Towing in Cascade Locks.

This tow truck driver was very kind and drove us home to pick up another car so that my wife could meet us at Alpine Auto Body. We pulled everything out of the Subaru and drove home. The time was now 5:10pm, and this journey started at about 11:30am. NOT MY FAVORITE EXPERIENCE!

We ate a quick dinner and decided to defuse at the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge, which is quite an awesome place, especially when we were the only ones there!

Fast forward: The body shop was apologetic but it was obvious they didn't want to claim any wrong doing! He sent us a picture of the ruptured transmission cooling line and another picture of a dent on the newly replaced lower guard. It was obvious that the guard they just replaced was damaged by one of the chain links used to load the car on the tow truck! He claimed the hoses were all good when they were inspected but then said a hairline fracture on the hose area that burst was difficult to see. We argued that the need to replace the damaged radiator would impart a shock on all the hoses. Keep in mind that the car has the original hoses and after an accident would be prudent to replace. It turns out that insurance companies only replace DAMAGED parts and that hoses aren't replaced as a matter of course. I would have paid for the hoses to be replaced anyway if I knew they were going to replace the radiator, and it was already disassembled.

We should get our car back tomorrow, but we'll be taking it to OUR mechanic to inspect the other hoses or replace them.

I should mention that about 7 vehicles passed us while we were waiting for a tow, and everyone offered any help they could give. I guess there is one bright spot in that the people on these forest roads were awesome! I will definitely need to return the kindness if ever this occurs to any unfortunate soul while on the backroads! Another plus is that we had a satellite phone, but the reception on this unit seemed a bit sketchy. The satellites seemed low on the horizon, but I felt it should have been a better signal and easier to lock the gps! I recommend Iridium over the InmarSat phone we have, and we might be switching?

Anyway, sorry about being long winded, but the day ended on a fine note!

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