Good Times at 9000 feet on 2-Wheels
By Jim Tully and Scott Taylor
Riding in the Sierra Nevada snow capped mountains...yea it's as good as it sounds! A better title might have been "A typical ride with Scott".
Our dual sport ride adventure started with a map and a rather cloudy head from a night of over indulgence. Now in retrospect, I can say without a doubt that maybe we were perhaps just a bit too zealous and ever so slightly over-confident with our ability to navigate this new riding area. Yea that's for sure, I think. Well heck we each had a GPS, over sized gas tanks, and were riding relatively newer machines and all had some bike skills. We spotted our first trial head by the two large rocks blocking the trail. Hum....The photo below is of that area. The vistas and riding were beautiful and breathe taking. If anything, there were too many wild flowers. More cow bell!
As we rode along we keep losing the trail in the wild flowers, rocks and steep ravines. It happened so many times we were forced to turn around and find our way back the way we came. We found our trail out and headed to the next stop on our ride. Kirkwood Ski Resort where we were going to feast on some food, drink a beer, and reflect on our ride so far.
After lunch and a pint of Black Butte Porter and sitting next to the guy at the bar who was a self exclaimed "expert rider from the area" we embarked on our next leg of the journey towards the Horse Canyon Trail. That guy at the bar was just a little too excited about us going on the Horse Canyon Trail know that I think about it. Hey, wasn't he saying that they were just out hiking. Maybe this was his way of rubbing out a few flower crushers. Anyways, the third leg of our party Todd wasn't “feeling it" so he decided to use what scarce amount of discretion there was and head back another way. Scott and I would have no part of the easy way back so we decided to ride the trail, heck was only 15 miles “ish” and it was only 3:30pm. Well in hindsight, maybe a closer look at those topographical lines on the map would have given us a clue or the name Horse Canyon could have provided a hint, had we not been so inspired by the Brewing Company and that damn guy at the bar self proclaimed expert rider my ass! It was about 5:45pm when we reached the part of the trail where it dropped into the canyon. The trail was damn near none existent and the switchbacks were the get off the bike type that included three or four point turnarounds on foot over a forest of down trees and some of the greatest boulder fields ever. My motorcycles engine didn't like all the stop and go riding and started blowing steam and would barely run at the extreme elevations, then my bike started the same damn thing when it gets hot, cough die, cough die. After killing the motor for the two hundredth time the battery was a bit disappointed I didn't go for the recluse clutch (auto clutch) and refused to fire the large four-stroke. After the first kick start episode I turned up the idle to help mask my inabilities to start the orange machine, but that soon failed too. Scott got me started the next time because the kick starter was seized when I tried it somehow.
Now its 7:30pm and we can't find the trail for the tenth time this half hour and were going through another boulder laden stream and she just quit. Scott comes by and says something like" gets that thing going, it's getting dark. I think I can see the trail start again". Good idea! I kicked, he kicked, I kicked, and nothing. We busted out some tools from our fanny packs and swapped out Scott's battery, hooked it up to my bike and again nothing. I would have loved to include a picture from that moment. I'm sure it was a look of "oh shit, now what"!
We didn't have any fuses nor did we have much day light so the next best idea was two up on Scott's bike. All I had to do was get off in the really gnarly sections which were only about 75% of the time. My favorites were the hill climbs after close to 9 hours of riding and wearing those Alpinestar ankle weights. We went as far as we could before daylight became the main reason we couldn't find the trail. We're out of water, at the bottom of a canyon that is way too gnarly to go back on, and it dark in 2 minutes. Time to gracefully call it a day and go back to the big down tree for some old fashion survival camping.
As the newly appointed trail boss with a lighter, magnesium and a map we started one hell of a fire, almost a forest fire. Oh shit…!... After hurrying to make a fire break and control the now raging fire, we were finally able to walk to the creek for some much needed water. As we lay down next to a large tree, the one space blanket we had was a real hit with Scott who used his physical stature to commandeer his share while I was still looking to make a pillow out of my tool kit and a couple elbow pads. The ground was smoldering where the fire had once been so we couldn't get too close to the new size manageable fire, so warmed a couple rocks from the fire and placed them near us. Nice touch, the night went off without a bear attack or big foot sighting.
At first light we were off two up on the only running motorcycle to find our way out. Of course as it turns out we were only less than a mile from a two track that lead us out to the main road. We followed the road for a short ways and it was down this road we saw the first emergency vehicle rolling up. The officer roles down the window and says, " you the fellers we looking for?” We nodded our heads and got a fuse, returned to the downed bike and plugged in the fuse and got it running with a 25 cent part. Later that day, after a nap we meet up again and went for a much mellower ride back to that bar to find that guy and his wife to let them know how much fun we had last night in the forest.
Morale of the story: Pack a good overnight bag anytime you’re exploring on 2-wheels, and never forget that occasionally poor decisions make things especially interesting!
