It's All About the Bike » adventure motorcycles

High Uintas to Flaming Gorge Dualsport Ride Part 1

Moto — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:28:36 +0000

I have lots of topics to write about from a recent dualsport moto tour through the High Uintas area of Utah and on into Flaming Gorge. For a later post, I’ll talk about the new Cardo Scala Rider G4 Powerset communication system that Darth and I were testing out. It’s a pretty cool new toy that works well for two-way communication between riders, and connects via Bluetooth with my iPhone (or other Bluetooth devices). I’ve never been much of a fan of wearing headphones while riding, but it sure is nice when your mind starts to wander on long stretches of nowhere road to be able to roll some tunes from the “Moto Playlist.” This post is more simply about how amazing it is to live in a place like Utah and have so many options right out your backdoor to go from garage to middle of nowhere in a matter of hours. Places like Hoop Lake and Beaver Meadow Reservoir. John Jarvie Ranch and the Swinging Bridge.

The one limiting factor this season has been the record-setting snowpack, and how long it has stuck around. Keep in mind we’re hitting mid-July, and some of the passes we rode on this last trip were not possible just a weekend or two before. For example, Elizabeth Ridge, the 10,235 feet high summit of the North Slope road still had considerable snow on top, and they (not sure who they are, but it’s got to be someone) are just now grading the road from the decay that results from a brutal winter. Another thing to note: some of the stream crossings in the High Uintas that you might normally blast through are pretty deep and swift. It seems like the water is just starting to come down off the mountains. We crossed one stream that required a two-man push to get the bikes across. Water was up to mid-thigh, and while walking across without a bike to hold onto, you could really feel the force wanting to carry you with the current.

After getting one bike across said stream crossing, a rider on a new KLR appeared coming from the opposite direction. He watched us wade back across to get the 2nd bike and do our routine. We told him we’d gladly help him get his bike across since we were already wet, or video him, if he was game to try to ride it. But he thought better and turned around to follow us in the direction we were heading, to the North Slope Road. At that point, our new friend Steve said he better head back to SLC, and he had quite a ride ahead of him to get back before dark. We still didn’t know if we would make it all the way through to Mountain View, Wyoming, as the road was still posted as closed, and there were some rumors of a bridge being out. On the way down the North Slope Road, we stopped a Jeep coming up the other way. He told us it was pretty rough for the next 10 miles, but it ended up being more like 2, so we had no problems getting down to Mountain View for gas and a Red Bull stop.

While resting for a moment at the Maverick in Mountain View, we made a call to Mark Wilson, the owner of Red Canyon Lodge in Flaming Gorge, to see how late the lodge’s restaurant would be open. We had to decide whether to get something to eat in Mountain View, or if we had enough to take a scenic dirt route to Flaming Gorge. Mark said definitely take the scenic route, and if we happened to arrive after 9:30 pm, when the kitchen shuts down, he’d set aside a couple hot plates for us. Turns out that was the right choice, and we still made it before 9:00 pm, giving us plenty of time to get a table and sit down to an excellent and civilized dinner with Mark at his place.

It may not look that deep, but it was.

The problem with waterproof boots: they keep water in, too.

Snow at the top of Elizabeth Ridge in the Uinta mountains.

Golden light at Beaver Meadow Reservoir.

Darth Nater at Beaver Meadow Reservoir. Extra points for lens flare!

First Impressions After 10 Days In Morocco

Moto — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:04:25 +0000

It’s impossible for me to pretend that I can gather my thoughts and string together a narrative that would do justice to our recent adventure riding tour with Loco For Motos in Morocco. Frankly, there are too many photos to go through, too much video from the GoPro helmet cams to log, too many vivid experiences that keep flashing through my memory. And yet now that I have been back for a few days now, I am overwhelmed with emails and messages from friends and readers of the blog who are eager to have the stories shared. The best I can do right now as I struggle to catch up with work, family, and the day-to-day busy work that somehow takes over our lives here in the U.S. (I’m talking about stuff like taxes, bills, yard work, taking care of the pets), is to share some of these experiences as they come back to me, in no chronological order, and not all encompassing of the whole trip. Perhaps I’ll be able to string them together and edit down at some point. That might take awhile. For now, I’ll be happy to get them up here in small chunks. As I crank through sorting my best photos and deleting the accidents (more on camera accidents in a later post), I realized I haven’t even seen any of the other guys’ photos yet, nor have I sorted through my iPhone Hipstamatic shots. For now, here are a few of my favorites from the Canon S95.

Our Got Bike stickers were well-placed throughout Morocco.

One of the many mountaintop resting spots in the Atlas Mountains.

It's starting to look a lot like Africa now.

Rolling through a Moroccan town after lunch and gassing up.

Obi-Ben, paused pensively in a Saharan dune.

Chalk Creek Ride

Moto — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:01:08 +0000

It’s been an interesting Spring here in Utah. After a record snowfall that dropped over 700 inches on our friends over at Snowbird, the big problem right now is high elevation and mid elevation snowpack that is 200-300% above normal. It hasn’t really warmed consistently yet, and all that energy is coiled up like a spring in the mountains, ready to unleash its fury in the form of flooding. I have yet to do any sort of weekend trips on the BMW F800 GS yet this year. Most of my riding has been limited to some commutes and short half-day trips. One of these recent Sunday morning sorties led Darth and myself up Chalk Creek Canyon out of Coalville, Utah. The Chalk Creek is one of the trouble spots here in Utah that is likely to cause some flooding issues, as snowpack from the Uinta Mountains melts off and releases its energy. We did a quick ride up the canyon to where the pavement ends and turns to dirt, and made our way to the Wyoming border, or thereabouts. All through the canyon, the creek was definitely raging. You could see evidence that the rising water levels had already reclaimed some pasture land, but no washed out roads, or floating trailers as of yet. We rode our bikes by a Mormon church in the canyon that had a big stockpile of sandbags in the parking lot, just in case. After snapping a few Hipstamatic iPhone photos, we returned the way we came. When the roads are clear of snow, the normal route for this ride would continue on into Wyoming just outside of Evanston, and return up and over the back side of the Mirror Lake Highway, into Kamas, Utah. With how much snow is up there right now, I’m thinking that road won’t be clear until mid June at the earliest.

Chalk Creek Rages as snow melts from the Uintas.

Darth inspects the new fork seals on my F800 GS.

Looking back from the Wyoming border.

Wish You Were Here

moto — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:50:14 +0000

Darth Nater and Esteban Frito are out on the road, doing a grand tour of Utah, Arizona, and Colorado. Two riders ain’t quite a posse, but it’s sometimes easier when you only have two to keep ticking off the miles, so I am sure these guys are getting along just fine. I would love to be on this trip, but as this summer was winding down, the pressures of work, and commitment of being around for my kid going back to school made it a 5 day trip unrealistic. Here’s a quick update from the boys on the road:

Photo from the road from Darth Nater

Note from Darth: “…The Skyline Drive was as good as it gets. Just enough sprinkles to make it tacky. In Salina now, making a few calls and enjoying an appetizer before 2 more hrs of pave to Brian Head. While still fun, these trips are always better with a few mates.”

How My Mind Works Sometimes

moto — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:17:31 +0000

I realize this post will likely create a lot of questions about what happened. I’m not a linear kind of guy when telling the story of a five-day dualsport motorcycle trip. I don’t keep a journal when I am out on the road. When you are riding in a large group (7 on this last trip), you go with the flow. I use my iPhone camera to snap some images that will help me remember the moments out on the road, and the places we have been. Then I piece the story back together in chunks that sometimes all fit together, never neatly. This post is about the Touratech Zega-Pro anodized black cases that I installed on the bike a few months ago. This was the first trip where I had them loaded to the gills. As you can see from the photos below, they got a little banged up on this trip. I learned an important lesson. Some would say a rookie mistake. When your bike is loaded up with 75 to 100 pounds of gear, the suspension handles quite differently when you are in rough terrain. That’s all I’ll say about the cause part of the cause-and-effect. This post is about the effect. The right side took quite a bashing. The pannier rack deformed enough that the box was pinching against my gas tank, but the box didn’t come off. The box itself was dented in the rear and the side, but later that night in the City of Rocks campground, my mates helped me bang it out with a two-by-four. We also took the rack off and did some blacksmithing to bend it back to the point were it wasn’t hitting my gas tank. Unfortunately there were a few cracks in the welds, so at least the right side rack will need to be replaced. The whole assembly did a lot to prevent my bike from serious damage. Check it out:

Direct side view of the right side box, post incident.

View of the box from the back. Ouch.

Walking it off after eating it in the ditch.

Slideshow from Lakeside Daytrip

moto — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:53:41 +0000

Below is a link to recent daytrip around part of the Great Salt Lake. The IAATB crew consisted of Moto, Darth, Bartman, Han Solo, and @ScottSLC. We need to think of a good road name for Scott.

Here’s the link, if the embedded slideshow doesn’t work properly, as in, if you can’t view Flash.

Winter Weather Still Has Its Grip On Utah

moto — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:15:10 +0000

Not much to report here, other than ski season is still hanging around. The BMW F800 GS is still covered up, hooked up to the battery tender, dying to get out on the road. I dug this photo up from an early spring moto trip a few years back, dated by the bikes: my KTM 640 Adventure which is now in the capable hands of North American 10k Biathlon Champion Casey Simons, and the Blue Angel which is now in Scott Beck’s garage. Never fear boys. Rip up the powder while we have it, it won’t last long. And soon the dirt roads will unfold ahead of us as we chase the setting sun.

Spring Dualsport Moto Trip circa 2008

How To Convince Your Wife To Let You Get A Motorcycle

moto — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:39:18 +0000

This only works for adventure motorcycles, definitely not Harleys, sport bikes, or motocross bikes. But if you really want to get into adventure riding and you don’t quite know how to open the dialogue with your wife, do this. Borrow or buy a copy of Long Way Round, a documentary about traveling the world on BMW motorcycles starring Ewan McGregor and his buddy Charley Boorman. Your wife will want to watch it because it stars Ewan McGregor. That’s the Trojan Horse. That’s what you use to wheel the conversation about getting a motorcycle within the gates of “categorical NO.” As you watch episode after episode, you will imagine yourself being the crafty Odysseus, on a seemingly never ending journey home. Home is when your wife gets to the end of the DVDs, and says, “that looks pretty cool, I bet you’d really enjoy that, honey.” Not exactly a “yes,” but sort of an implied OK. Home is that spot in your garage that you start clearing, long before you have made your purchase, where you will eventually wheel in your new ride. It also can work when you have already had the conversation without a definitive green light, and you are in a sense taking your own “Long Way Round” to seeking your wife’s approval. You waive the element of surprise, because if you bust out LWR at the very end, she will know what you are up to and be suspicious. But it stars Ewan McGregor, you keep telling her. At this point, you might as well be throwing a hail mary pass into the endzone, in which case, this is the only play you’ve got left. So what do you have to lose?

Last Day of May Mudfest

moto — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:59:41 +0000

A small posse made up of myself, Nato and Ben attempted to loop from Heber, Utah, up into the Uinta mountains. We motored up Center Street towards the dirt, and saw two big moose crossing the street right by the LDS church. Cars were off to the side of the road, people taking pictures, moose taking their sweet time. Not sure what I would have done if they came in our direction, we were only about 20 feet back. I think I would have layed the bike down in the road and jumped in the creek. Ever see two moose jump over a fence? Breathtaking. We didn’t get very far up the canyon before we encountered some snow patches. The first few were no problem, as some trucks loaded with ATVs had cut some nice deep tire ruts. Just get your wheels in the tracks and juice it. Eventually, we hit a nasty section where the snow was deep and as far as the eye could see, and it was pretty muddy too. The little KTM I was riding squirted through the mud just fine, but the BMW and the KLR looked like they were trying to burrow into the mud with even the slightest amount of throttle. It will be a few weeks of warm weather before we’ll be getting into the mountains thataway.

Obi Ben Recons Guardsman Pass

moto — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:07:15 +0000

The last day of May 2009 is here, and it will still be awhile before the IAATB crew will be riding our favorite rides in the Wasatch Mountains. Obi Ben rode to the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon to see if it’s possible to connect to Park City via Guardsman Pass, and the photo below tells the tale. It will take a few weeks of summer weather before we are riding any of the high mountains.

Obi Ben gave it a college try, but there is still a lot of snow above 9000 feet.