Jason C. headed up Thurs. AM in his aging Explorer, to secure the spot and start cutting wood. Bill R. went up on Fri AM in his wife's Silverado, as his CJ needs a new tranny, to help Jason with setup. Myself, and my buddy Murphy weren't able to get away till Sat AM. Murphy was driving his Nissan Titan, with a camper loaded on, and I was driving my blue EXT, all fixed up after my wife's recent crash.
On reaching the turn-off from Hwy 1 to Silver-Skagit Road, I took the lead, as Murphy hadn't been into this valley for decades, and I had been there only 6 weeks earlier. The first 5 km were paved, so smooth going, but as soon as we hit the gravel, I saw that the recent heavy rains, combined with heavy log haulers, had changed the main road dramatically. The next 25 km were either soft and rutted, or extremely potholed and washboarded. It took us a full hour to navigate that stretch, since Murphy had to be careful not to pound the camper apart from the bone jarring bumps. It was late morning by the time we reached camp, and of course Jason and Bill joked that we planned it that way, to avoid having to do any set up work.
We did drag in a few of the logs Jason had cut the day before, so we were forgiven, and allowed to take a seat at the campfire 
After lunch, Murphy and I headed out in my TB EXT to check out some of the smaller logging roads for deer and bear sign, or maybe Bigfoot tracks
. The first trail out of camp, Upper Silverhope FSR, hadn't been used for logging in years, and we encountered the first rockslide across it only 1.5km from camp. Other 4-wheelers, or ATVers,had piled smaller rocks around the larger ones to make a ramp up and over the big boulders, but there was a 1' tall "tooth" sticking up in the middle of this that I knew I couldn't clear, since I haven't got my lift installed yet, so we parked and hiked on up the steep trail. Another 1 km along there was an even bigger rockfall, with boulders 1/2 the size of my truck, so we didn't hike any further. We tried several other branch roads during the rest of the daylight hours, all of them ending in landslides, washouts, or large deadfalls across the way. We covered about 25 km. of trails without seeing any game, or even any tracks, so it was back to camp for dinner, a big roaring fire, and some adult beverages 
Just at dinner time another rig pulled in, belong to Arlo, an invited co-worker of Bill's, with his very tricked out 4 dr Tracker, with snorkel, D-rings front and rear, roof rack with gerry cans, rear seat removed for gear stowage, and an OD paint job. No pics, as he arrived after dark, and left at 0600 to go "mudding" with some of his extreme offroad buddies.There'd be no shortage of mud for Arlo, as the skies had opened up to dump buckets of rain at about midnight, and wasn't letting up at all this morning, so we called it a finish, packed up camp (including previous jerks messes)and headed into Hope for brunch. Some of you may know of Hope from Stallone's "First Blood" movie, it was shot there, with some of the outdoor scenes in the valley where we were camped, too. Hope now bills itself as the "Chainsaw Sculpture Capitol of the World", so I've included a few shots of that artform.
Here's my pics:
