Today is the 80th anniversary of The Great Escape when 76 WWII POWs tunneled out from a Nazi prison camp. Chalks Rd. was closed. When we got to the driveway entrance to the farm, the gate was closed which was very unusual. And when we got to the trailhead, there were plenty of trees piled up blocking it along with closure signs. A substantial part of the trail had been washed away. So we did Plan B and got to try White House Canyon Rd. It’s always been on my list but since Charlotte and Emily haven’t done Big Basin, I wanted to do the classic loop first. We had a quite a few wrong turns thanks to Garmin rerouting the wrong way. It meant tons of adventure ie. going around fences we thought we needed to go around because we didn't realize we weren't on White House Canyon Rd. Even once we got back on track, the trail was unclear and there were a lot of downed branches and trees. No one's been on it in a while. The trail wasn't packed down and it made riding through it harder. White House Canyon was very pretty though. Once we got to Gazos Creek, the number of downed trees blocking the trail meant we were walking as much as we were riding so we made the decision to turn around and get burgers instead. We didn’t know what was ahead and had we done the full loop, we wouldn’t have gotten food. So the decision was easy. Also around that time the skies got gray whereas it was nice and sunny earlier. We briefly got very lightly sprinkled on. Glad we didn't get rained on as not everyone had rain jackets and the wind chill was very real. When the wind was at our back it was glorious though but howling and chilly otherwise. I also decided to wear my Gore-Tex shoes because I figured there'd be puddles. What I wasn't expecting was how slippery they would be. Trying to ride up the technical bits of White House Canyon as my feet were slipping and sliding and floating around was quite tricky. While the shoes did keep my feet dry, I don't think I'll wear them again.