The Dirt Biker Chronicles

Ginger or Mary Ann? It’s one the great proverbial question every man has to answer at one time or another. Though most of us would just as soon take both women as hurt one’s feelings, we all have chose a favorite between the two

And so it goes with riding the forest or desert. While most of us ride both, we all have a favorite when you get down to it.

It’s great being a dirt bike rider in Southern Idaho. We have a wide variety of forest and desert available to ride. Almost everything South of the Snake River is desert, stretching into Nevada and beyond to Mexico. Conversely, go North of the Snake River about 50 miles, and almost everything is mountainous forest, stretching to Canada.

Our group rides the desert starting in the late Fall, through Winter, and into Spring, when the mountains clear of snow. Then we ride the mountains all through Summer and into the Fall until the weather forces us out. But if you asked us our favorite place to ride? No question, it would be the forest.

However,  I’ve met many a rider who loves the desert and never rides in the forest.  Take my own brother. He is content to ride out around Hemingway and Rabbit’s Creek and you won’t catch him in the forest. It’s sad how two people raised in the same family could be so different.

I say people who have never rode single-track in the forest don’t know what they’re missing! When it come to technical riding, the forest is hands down the better riding. The forest has every imaginable obstacle: rocks, trees, roots, creeks, and logs to name a few. And don’t forget the forests are spread across mountains. That means narrow side-hill, “goat” trails running along deep ravines. It means steep, tight, switchbacks going up and down. It means riding sections where a mistake can mean serious injury or death.

Yea, the desert has it’s technical challenges too. I’m not selling it short. There are plenty of rocks and sagebrush to deal with, sand, sand washes, some creeks, and hill climbs. It’s just not quite as much as the forest offers.

So when you see our ride pictures change over to the desert scenery for the next six months, don’t think that we are pure desert riders. Nope, we just love riding and will take what we can get. Our heart lies in the forest and come next Spring, there we shall return.

Oh yea, lest I forget, I’ve always been a Ginger guy

Filed under: The Dirt Biker Chronicles on October 9th, 2007 | No Comments »

Nine of us started the ride, which was to be an Advanced ride: Brett Madron, Steve Frisbee, Verrick Bach,  Troy Cobbley, Cody Grover, Andreas and his sons Austin and Aaron (13 and 16), and myself.

It was a planned 65 mile loop. Our first mistake was riding the known trails and saving the unknown, unridden-for-years trails, for the second-half of the ride.

The first 35 miles were awesome trails in beautiful country. Nine of us made it to the half way point, but Cody Grover got a hole in his radiator, so he and Andreas took a forest road back. It was the last forest road we’d have the opportunity to take for a long, long time. That left seven of us to continue on. It was around 4pm at this point with about 30 miles left. We felt like we’d be back to camp by 7 or 8pm, no problem.

We dropped down Sheep Mountain trail and started up the Sheep Creek trail. That is where the trouble started. I didn’t know it at the time, but in reflection, we crossed  through the gates of hell about one mile up that trail. That is where we should have turned around, rode back to the last forest road and gone home. But we didn’t know better.

Sheep Creek trail followed a creek up a deep canyon. A forest fire had gone through there a few years ago and really hammered the trail. We hit a section where the trail washed out and we had to cross the creek twice. This was a big, wide, rocky creek and we had to help one another across to make sure no one dropped their bike.

We continued on from there but the next two miles took us nearly three hours to ride because it was a gnarly, brushy trail and we had to cut several fallen trees to get through. We also had to do some pushing over rocks and dragging bikes back on the side hill trail. Troy and I were riding at the rear with the kids. I was already tired from man-handling my own bike, but we were having to help the kids over everything too, so it was exhausting. Thank God we had water filters because we drank way more water than we packed.

We hoped once we got out of the valley and up on a ridge we’d get to the next trail junction and find it better traveled and make up time. I still hadn’t given up hope on making it back before dark, but the doubt was growing in the back of my mind. By this time we knew we’d past the point of no return. If we tried to ride all the way back we’d have people running out of gas and it would be dark before we got to a forest road. So we were forced to ride on and hope the trail got better so we could make it to Trinity Ridge road before dark. We stopped cutting every fallen tree to save time. If we could ride around them or over them we did.

It was somewhere in here the 16 year old Aaron said to me, “I can’t go much farther, I don’t have much left.” I told him, “dude, we got no choice. We’re twenty miles from anything.”

The trail got a little better and our time picked up, but Trinity Ridge road was further than it looked on the map or GPS. At the last trail junction when we hit Lava Mountain trail it was around 9pm and we knew we had less than an hour of light. By our best calculations we had seven miles to the road. We were hoping it was the best seven miles of trail and we’d just make it as the sun went down. By this time, though, I knew we were screwed and would not make the road before dark. This was about the time I started asking God for a little help making it out.

Nonetheless we pushed on. The light steadily faded as we crossed a few more ridges and before you knew it we were riding in the dark. Frisbee stopped in a valley below North Star lake to check our bearing. By now Frisbee was leading and I was behind him. I had switched positions with Madron so he could help the kids over obstacles for awhile. We were really hoping around the next ridge would be the road, and that we had only had a couple of miles to go.

This is where the bad news started compounding. When Bach and Madron caught up with us, they told us that Austin had crashed and broke his headlight. They left his bike behind and Verrick was riding him on the back of his bike. Madron and Aaron had the only two-strokes and Aaron was on reserve already with Madron also low. We started going up the ridge (hoping it was the last one) and Aaron ran out of gas. Now we were down two bikes.

Still hoping it was only a couple of miles to the road we decided to have the boys keep walking. Troy would stay with them on his bike. Should they get too tired or need to stop he said he had a lighter to start a fire. It was a mistake for us not to clarify what provisions Troy really had, because it turned out he didn’t have matches or a lighter, or anything significant besides food and water. A mistake because the rest of us had fire starter and solar blankets. Now it was a cool night in the forties and it was chilly. Our feet were wet because we had been in and out of creeks, and we only had riding shirts on because it had been a hot day.

The rest of us were going to keep riding and try to make it home, then send back a rescue squad. Of course as soon as we started up the ridge, it turned nasty. There was a class-5 uphill section and we had to help push each other’s bike uphill, over a boulder. After that there was still more rocky uphill in the dark. It was pitch dark and you could see like three feet of trail in front of your fender. I was real tired, trying to get out uninjured, praying for the trail to get easier and for us to make it out, but really losing hope we would.

After we made it up the nasty ridge, the trail got a little better. We came to Smith Creek Lake at about 11:20pm. There we found two trails leaving. We weren’t sure which was the right trail. There happened to be a couple of backpackers camping in a tent there. We figured we had already woke them up with the bike noise, so we went and asked them what was the right trail. The guy told us which trail to take and that it was 3.5 miles to the road. Then he throws in, “but it’s a pretty nasty trail.” After hearing that I proposed building a fire and staying the night. Then we could get the other three guys and hang together until the sun came up. Since we were close to getting out, the other guys wanted to keep riding to get help back at camp.

So Madron, Frisbee, Bach and myself, rode on. Madron has an RM250 that doesn’t have a headlight so he rode between us. We rode in as tight a formation as you’ll ever see, pretty much 1^st gear all the way. The trail had its’ moments, but thank God it wasn’t as bad as the guy made it sound or as bad as the stuff we’d already rode in the dark. There was one major fallen tree that we had to lift all four bikes over; yet another exhausting task on top of uncountable others. Finally, though, we made the road. I was never so happy to see a forest road in my life! It was still nine miles to ride to camp, but it was finally a sure thing. Madron ran out of gas half-way and then rode on the back of my bike the rest of the way to camp. We got to camp about 1:15am and told those still awake what was had happened. Andreas and a guy named Kevin loaded some backpacks and hopped in the truck to drive to the trailhead. They planned to hike in until they found the other three.

Meanwhile, the other three - Austin, Aaron and Troy - had not walked all the way to Smith Creek Lake before they decided to hunker down until sunup. That’s where Troy found out he didn’t have a lighter or matches. By the grace of God someone had left a sleeping bag out there, in the middle of forest, on the side of the trail, and they stumbled upon it. That is likely the only thing that kept them from getting hypothermia. Andreas and Kevin did not find them until about 6am, but they were fine. A crew of bikes rode up at about 8am with gas and whatnot to get the two abandoned bikes. Everything and everyone was recovered successfully by early afternoon.

Lessons learned: The most important lesson is to always be prepared for worst case scenarios. You have so many rides that end as planned that you begin to take it for granted that you could get stuck in the forest some night. I was happy with the fact that I had a water filter, ample food, a solar blanket, fire starter, flashlight, GPS, radio, and a small survival kit with me. I know I could have survived the night. However, I could have benefited from having a light weigh jacket, extra socks and hat. I wasn’t well prepared for the cold of night that came.

The second thing I would do different in hind site would be to try to keep the group together. I believe there is safety in numbers. We could have built a fire to keep us warm until the sun came up, then we could have spilt up to get help. However, at the time we thought the road was within walking distance, and that leads me to another lesson learned: assuming and hoping isn’t near as good as knowing. We should not have split based on assumptions of the distance. Also, riding single track in the forest at night, on unknown trails at that, is far more dangerous than daylight riding. We increased the risk of one of us getting hurt and then having three separated groups in the forest.

Filed under: The Dirt Biker Chronicles on July 24th, 2007 | No Comments »

After organizing a few Intermediate rides for the TVTMA (Treasure Valley Trail Machine Association) , I have come to realize there is a lot of disparity in the interpretation of the word Intermediate. I have labeled rides as Intermediate only to hear people comment afterwards, “that ride was harder than intermediate”.

Therefore, I decided to attempt to interpret what Intermediate means. However, to give a thorough analysis, I will expand this to include all the levels from Beginner to Expert, for both rider and terrain.

Classifying Terrain
So how does one rate terrain? To do this, I solicited the input of a couple of my favorite riding buddies, Dave Gomez and Dan Wilkins. Dan came up with a scale, 1- 10, for rating terrain difficulty, with 10 being the extreme hardest. Anything over 10 would be impossible to ride over. I have taken their scale and written in examples to help clarify each level. Here it is:

10 Expert Advanced- Some examples would be: long, steep, rutted climbs or descents over terrain covered with rocks and roots; narrow sidehill trails traversing steep, mountain sides; or tight switchbacks that turn steeply over embedded roots and rocks. The kind of obstacles that only the most outstanding riders can ride over without paddling or pushing. The kind of obstacles where if you make a mistake riding them, it will mean serious injury or worse. A trail that fits as an example here would be riding up the Lodgepole Creek Trail in the Boise National Forest. A trail Dave said was the “hardest trail I have been on to date.”
9 Advanced - You’re still dealing with rocks, roots, creeks, trees, brush, ruts, and every other obstacle on steep terrain. It’s just not quite as life threatening, and a little easier to push or pull over if you can’t ride it. Going up the Venice Creek Trail in the Sawtooth National Forest is an example that comes to mind. It has some 2 - 3-foot root steps to get up, some steep switchbacks and plenty of rocks. But you would be able to get up it easier than a trail like Lodgepole.
8 Advanced Intermediate - Just a shade of gray down from Advanced, but a little less extreme on the danger scale. A little less steep and long, and the rocks, roots and creeks are more navigable. Still, you need to be a good rider to handle this kind of stuff. The Grassy Mountain Lakes Trail in the Payette National forest is a good example for this level. It’s about five miles of non-stop climbing up a mountain, followed by a descent down a steep shale sidehill.
7 Upper Intermediate - A notch down the difficulty dial again, but still all the common obstacles are likely encountered. The Charlie Kouba trail near Idaho City is a good example of this level.
6 Middle Intermediate - You still got your single-track with some rocks, roots, ruts, and trees as possible obstacles. But the trails are better groomed and traveled, with less treacherous obstacles and hills. A trail that fits this mold is the Yellowjacket trail in the Boise National Forest.
5 Lower Intermediate - Trail 500 at Black’s Creek is a good example trail for this level. There aren’t any trees or roots, just some sage brush. The rocks are fewer as well. What you do have are some decent hill climbs and descents on rutted, whooped, ATV trails. A good trail to start developing climbing skills.
4 Advanced Beginner - Riding to Silver City from Rabbit’s Creek comes to mind here.This is all four-wheel drive roads, with some minor hill climbing and ruts and rocks to deal with.
3 - 2 Middle Beginner - This is the first kind of cross-country trail new riders can handle once they have learned to shift, throttle, and brake a bike. Trail 100 from Hemingway Butte to Rabbit’s Creek is a good example. It is an ATV trail with very mild ups and downs and no real obstacles along the way.
1 True Beginner  - This is a flat area like a the parking area at Hemingway where someone just learning to ride won’t have to worry about running into anything, or over anything. This is where you learn to use the clutch, shift, and use the brakes.
Classifying Riders
A scale of 1 - 10 works for terrain, but it is too granular for classifying riders. Riders can be categorized into four main levels, with each level having ranges of lower to upper within. Here they are:

Expert Advanced- These are professionals and very experienced, talented riders. They can climb and descent the steepest hills, forge the deep, rocky streams, and make things that scare most riders look easy. These kind of guys have no problems riding over 100 miles on single-track through the forest.
Advanced - Advanced level is the best most of us can aspire to be. Advanced riders have good skills, experience, and savvy. They are just a few notches down from the Experts in speed, skill, and probably craziness.
Intermediate - You have to have a little time in the saddle to get here, but talented people who ride frequently can get to the Intermediate level quickly. An Intermediate rider is fairly proficient at hill climbing and navigating your standard obstacles. Solid Intermediate riders can handle rides ranging from 20 to 70 miles on single track. If you’re riding single-track forest trails that are longer than 10 miles, you’re probably at least lower-Intermediate.
Beginner - As the word itself implies, this is the starting point. From just learning to balance, shift, throttle and brake, to getting out on the first short trail rides, and learning to climb hills.
There you have it. The manual for classifying both terrain and riders. One word of advice: have an honest friend classify you. I have noticed a human tendency for us to think we are better riders than we are, only to get in over our head on a trail, fighting for our lives to make it back to the truck. Hey, but that’s half the fun!

Filed under: The Dirt Biker Chronicles on June 30th, 2007 | 3 Comments »