The Nataga, is a creek canyon at the end of the trip up the Kelsall logging road, about 30 miles.
I realize I don't have many photos of the logging road, but doing 50+ on a rutty, bumpy trail is not conducive to taking photos, and who wants to see the getting-there anyway?
About half the logging road is along the river, then the second half begins to climb the side of the mountain. It is then we begin to get into some powder!
There are 2 logged spots along the way we like to take a detour through, The powder is good and the hill is great, but nobody that has been this way stops for long because by this point, the Nataga is calling your name!  

At the end of the logging road we turn off into the timber and the fun begins now!
You never know if when you get here you will make it into the Nataga. The snow conditions must be just right.
Too light of powder and even the 2" paddle tracks can't get grip. If the snow is too heavy, you bog down and can't climb.
And climb is what it is all about at this point!
There is only one way that is possible, and there is no trail, you just have to have been there before.
you climb very steep, weaving around huge trees, with only enough space to bank your turns, ever climbing, ever weaving... On and on for a thousand feet.
Through the trees off to the right, the snow drops even steeper into an abyss from which there is no escape! To the left the ravine cuts too steep and the trees get too thick to navigate. This is do or die! To get stuck means everlasting torment, in a lake of fire...no no, that's hell, sorry. I got excited.
Let's just say, when you sit looking down into the ravine where you begin your climb up the other side, there is this quiet pause.
Nobody wants to be called chicken, so you wait, hoping sombody will volunteer to make the test.
Then sombody does, and the game begins!

Just when you think you are about at the top, you come up over to a sorta flat place and the hill climbs again!
you know if you stop you will not have the momentum needed to climb it, so you hold her to the pin, suck up, and climb the next one.
If somebody gets stuck, like a fly on flypaper, you weave around him no different than a tree and are grateful he punched the trail as far as he did!
You feel no pitty, you don't contemplate helping, you have been there before, and probably will be again.
But not today!

And then, you break out on top, not to climb yet again but to STOP! and right now!
It is here you realize you have been climbing one wall of a ridge. And now you are looking down the other, Just as steep, but not as far....Because at the bottom is the Nataga!

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