Friday, March 20, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
03-10-09 - Lost Trails ATV Park Writeup
Ok, so let me try to quantify what this past weekend was for me. Insane begins to describe it, so we have been riding bikes religiously every weekend at local spots so the time to go to an official trail system was now. On Saturday Rock (KTM) and myself (CRF230) packed up the truck and headed up to "lost trails ATV park" for what we thought would be a great change of pace from the trash laden places that we had been riding locally. It is a 9000 Acre ATV/MX park with all sorts of trails similar to that of a ski slope (Blue diamonds, black diamonds yada yada). The other two heads that we have been riding with were thinking about coming, but a scheduling problem deferred them to sitting out this one and just going riding local on Sunday (Twiggs and stine; CRF230L & 100R respectively). Thank god, because they both would have been ill prepared for a trek like this (as was I!).
We pull upto the spot get the bikes all unloaded and rock realizes that since he is trying to convert the bike to a street legal dual sport, there is all sorts of additional wiring that he ran and there is a short in the wiring causing the battery to be dead and the electric start to malfunction. He is lucky that the bike has a kickstarter, however kickstarting a high compression MX bike is hardly a pleasantry and at this point we realize that this could be a long day. We pay our registration fees and join the ranks of people beginning to launch off from the starting point. It was pulling onto the main access road that i knew we were in for a rough day. The mentality that i was keeping as traveled up to this park is that i can handle anything as long as there isn’t an abundance of large loose rocks. I was telling myself i can handle gravel, water, inclines, roots, anything really, just not softball and basketball size rocks. Well pulling onto the main road/trail, it is about a 1/2 mile long, uphill, riverbed from all of the snow that had melted. There is bright brown mud flowing down this hill complete with miniboulders and huge ruts swelling with water and mud. "Don’t worry" a mutter to myself, "you only have to ride up this hill long enough to get onto another trail, the first green trail was maybe 1/2 mile up". I battle the bike to keep both wheels on the ground and keep forward progress up this slope. Meanwhile quad dudes have 4 wheels and just power up the terrain, wheel spin is no issue for them because they don’t have to maintain balance, but hey that is what separates the hobbyists from the hardcore.
We make it up the road and decide to enter the first trail starting slow with a green trail. The trails consisted of two ruts (again geared towards quads) filled with water, mud and larger river washed stones, they threaded through some dense forest, trees small and large at close corners and easily within collisions reach. We navigate through the trail and hop onto the next one, this one contained more elevation change and was located on the south side of the mountain so the sun was pretty limited at 11AM when we passed through. This time the conditions remain similar with the rut and rock content however this time there is a twist or two: Unmelted snow & ice and a steep elevation of say 20-30*. Going up the path was riddled with wheel spin, instability and near misses but the best was yet to come. We make it to the peak and realize that we must now traverse down a winding path of the same slope however this time there were no ruts and the entire trail was covered in loose rocks and miniboulders, slippery, wet and icy. It was at this point that you are really hopping from stone to stone, trying to actuate the brake, clutch and rear brake to allow you to go down smoothly and not lockup the front wheels because you will go flying over the handlebars. It was about 50 yards shy of the bottom that i panicked. The wheels were locked and i was trying to use engine braking to stop myself from heading right into this 5" diameter tree while the trail turned sharply to the left. Before my very eyes the bike slid out from under my legs and i held onto the handlebars for dear life knowing that if it gets momentum in the fall it is sliding all the way down the hill rocks and all! It was at this point that the most major injury of the day came, the bike went down and my right knee came smashing down on a nice 18" rock. I thought immediately that i shattered my knee cap, but jumped to my feet to grab the bike, hit the kill switch and cut the gas (it will leak out the overflow tube when sideways). All in all i made it out of that crash decently but my knee was throbbing. Then came the hardest part, starting from a stop on a steep tractionless rocky hill. I fired up the bike and attempted to engine brake down the rest of the way when the bike slidout again this time smashing my other knee against the stones. At this point i am so fatigued and throbbing that had to actually walk the bike down the rest of the trail, but even that was difficult, actuating the brakes to keep the speed down, the bike was still just sliding tractionless down this hill! Unbelievable!!
At the bottom i gathered myself and my machine, threw out a couple obscenities and mustered up enough energy to keep going. That small instance that i described above accounts for maybe 10% of the total intensity that was experienced that day. There were miles of trails, most just as treacherous as the first, full of flowing mud and water. There were elevation changes galore, tree roots, logs, boulders, bid puddles, sharp turns, ruts, downhills, everything. Many times over the course of the day i was in total awe of the engineering involved with the bike. Essentially you are propelling these two 4" contact patches up and over rock obstacles and climbing hills that you probably wouldn’t consider hiking up on foot. The bike revs freely and power gets put down. Meanwhile the very rocks that you were using for traction are getting thrown behind you and searching for the next rock to ride over to maintain your momentum up the hill. Next you are greeted by a summit at the top of the mountain where you can see just how far you have come and how far you have yet to go. You look around and realize the only two things you have right now as tools are your battered body and the filthy machine that you were driving at the limit to get here.
Overall the experience was top-10 life accomplishments. There were times when i would question am i going to make it? Do i even have the energy to pickup the bike and if so can i even get enough momentum to make it over this log and up the rest of this slippery slope? The 250lb bike easily weighed 500lbs when you were stuck on a hill and out of energy. Other times i would question: how do you even design a machine that's intention is navigating this harsh harsh terrain? Where do you begin?... Over the course of the day i fell probably about 15 times all of varying degrees of injury, I was close lined by a tree and another time i flew off the bike and landed about 15 feet away. However at the end of the day, we had put in about 6 hours of hardcore off-road trail riding and all of the injuries faded to a warm glow when we arrived home and my lips were met with cold Sierra Nevada!
We pull upto the spot get the bikes all unloaded and rock realizes that since he is trying to convert the bike to a street legal dual sport, there is all sorts of additional wiring that he ran and there is a short in the wiring causing the battery to be dead and the electric start to malfunction. He is lucky that the bike has a kickstarter, however kickstarting a high compression MX bike is hardly a pleasantry and at this point we realize that this could be a long day. We pay our registration fees and join the ranks of people beginning to launch off from the starting point. It was pulling onto the main access road that i knew we were in for a rough day. The mentality that i was keeping as traveled up to this park is that i can handle anything as long as there isn’t an abundance of large loose rocks. I was telling myself i can handle gravel, water, inclines, roots, anything really, just not softball and basketball size rocks. Well pulling onto the main road/trail, it is about a 1/2 mile long, uphill, riverbed from all of the snow that had melted. There is bright brown mud flowing down this hill complete with miniboulders and huge ruts swelling with water and mud. "Don’t worry" a mutter to myself, "you only have to ride up this hill long enough to get onto another trail, the first green trail was maybe 1/2 mile up". I battle the bike to keep both wheels on the ground and keep forward progress up this slope. Meanwhile quad dudes have 4 wheels and just power up the terrain, wheel spin is no issue for them because they don’t have to maintain balance, but hey that is what separates the hobbyists from the hardcore.
We make it up the road and decide to enter the first trail starting slow with a green trail. The trails consisted of two ruts (again geared towards quads) filled with water, mud and larger river washed stones, they threaded through some dense forest, trees small and large at close corners and easily within collisions reach. We navigate through the trail and hop onto the next one, this one contained more elevation change and was located on the south side of the mountain so the sun was pretty limited at 11AM when we passed through. This time the conditions remain similar with the rut and rock content however this time there is a twist or two: Unmelted snow & ice and a steep elevation of say 20-30*. Going up the path was riddled with wheel spin, instability and near misses but the best was yet to come. We make it to the peak and realize that we must now traverse down a winding path of the same slope however this time there were no ruts and the entire trail was covered in loose rocks and miniboulders, slippery, wet and icy. It was at this point that you are really hopping from stone to stone, trying to actuate the brake, clutch and rear brake to allow you to go down smoothly and not lockup the front wheels because you will go flying over the handlebars. It was about 50 yards shy of the bottom that i panicked. The wheels were locked and i was trying to use engine braking to stop myself from heading right into this 5" diameter tree while the trail turned sharply to the left. Before my very eyes the bike slid out from under my legs and i held onto the handlebars for dear life knowing that if it gets momentum in the fall it is sliding all the way down the hill rocks and all! It was at this point that the most major injury of the day came, the bike went down and my right knee came smashing down on a nice 18" rock. I thought immediately that i shattered my knee cap, but jumped to my feet to grab the bike, hit the kill switch and cut the gas (it will leak out the overflow tube when sideways). All in all i made it out of that crash decently but my knee was throbbing. Then came the hardest part, starting from a stop on a steep tractionless rocky hill. I fired up the bike and attempted to engine brake down the rest of the way when the bike slidout again this time smashing my other knee against the stones. At this point i am so fatigued and throbbing that had to actually walk the bike down the rest of the trail, but even that was difficult, actuating the brakes to keep the speed down, the bike was still just sliding tractionless down this hill! Unbelievable!!
At the bottom i gathered myself and my machine, threw out a couple obscenities and mustered up enough energy to keep going. That small instance that i described above accounts for maybe 10% of the total intensity that was experienced that day. There were miles of trails, most just as treacherous as the first, full of flowing mud and water. There were elevation changes galore, tree roots, logs, boulders, bid puddles, sharp turns, ruts, downhills, everything. Many times over the course of the day i was in total awe of the engineering involved with the bike. Essentially you are propelling these two 4" contact patches up and over rock obstacles and climbing hills that you probably wouldn’t consider hiking up on foot. The bike revs freely and power gets put down. Meanwhile the very rocks that you were using for traction are getting thrown behind you and searching for the next rock to ride over to maintain your momentum up the hill. Next you are greeted by a summit at the top of the mountain where you can see just how far you have come and how far you have yet to go. You look around and realize the only two things you have right now as tools are your battered body and the filthy machine that you were driving at the limit to get here.
Overall the experience was top-10 life accomplishments. There were times when i would question am i going to make it? Do i even have the energy to pickup the bike and if so can i even get enough momentum to make it over this log and up the rest of this slippery slope? The 250lb bike easily weighed 500lbs when you were stuck on a hill and out of energy. Other times i would question: how do you even design a machine that's intention is navigating this harsh harsh terrain? Where do you begin?... Over the course of the day i fell probably about 15 times all of varying degrees of injury, I was close lined by a tree and another time i flew off the bike and landed about 15 feet away. However at the end of the day, we had put in about 6 hours of hardcore off-road trail riding and all of the injuries faded to a warm glow when we arrived home and my lips were met with cold Sierra Nevada!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
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