The track up the granite face, blasted out with dynamite for no logical reason I could see other than "it was there", rapidly deteriorated into a one way ledge averaging about two feet wider than a standard wheel track. Once one gained some altitude on the first right to left traverse, it was common for the passenger to get out at a wide spot and walk, the mental strain of looking out the window and not being able to see anything but air being too great for anyone sober. The other reason was that one could literally get out only at certain places, the driver’s door frequently being jammed against the wall, and there being too little footroom to slide around the truck if one descended out the passenger door. My father walked. I walked. The jeep bounced and ground it's way up ahead of us. The first switchback was nothing, really. Most vehicles could make the turn in one pass. Then another straight mile of left to right traverse, gaining altitude and airspace, and the second switchback. Everyone stopped here and looked at it hard for several minutes before trying it. The second switchback was so tight and narrow that it took even the little army jeeps two cuts to make it. The bigger pickups required three. Down the slope a thousand feet on the logical fall line were two crushed vehicle bodies, unrecoverable rusting gravestones. When one backed up to make a cut, the wheels had no room to slide on gravel. Once stopped, starting back up had to be instantaneous with a tight clutch and handbrake. Dad took over for this maneuver, and my brother and I climbed back in for the final traverse, sitting on the inside edge of the pickup box with one leg over the side ready to jump. Not the least of reasons trips to Chopaka were typically so extended was that, visually and emotionally at least, the trip down was worse. Then the driver was on the outside most of the time. And the switchback was worse because you drove forward, beyond your vision of the roadbed before you stopped. We finally ground our way over the top of the wall, and settled down for the long, slow, bumpy, but safe trip to the campsite, situated in a stand of birch trees next to a near dry creek bed. From there the track split, the left hand branch continuing up the mountain to eventually pass a spring located impossibly near the summit of the seven thousand foot mountain. Some years that spring and it's attending stand of birch looked like a barnyard populated with blue grouse. The right hand track continued to follow the creek bed a mile up over a shoulder to pass Chopaka Lake, a sullen, quiet, lost mountain/desert lake of little consequence then. For reasons unknown, execpt perhaps to discourage people from trying the road, in those years the lake was closed to fishing and few, if any, in my family fished.
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