2014 Grand Canyon Ride

 

2014 Grand Canyon Ride

 

The navigator spent a considerable amount of time doing due diligence to create a route with the simple intent of: starting in Utah and riding a three day unsupported loop to possibly include the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon. The ride was going to be a "last chance epic" ride for Stu and Jim's sons, Matt and Bob respectively.

Due to the way the Utah mountains run north to south, a “loop” was a bit difficult to create.  After several renditions involving an AAA map and various colored highlighter markers, a route was formed.  I emailed the group with the suggestion of:  Day one,  Parking the truck just outside of Zion NP and riding to the Grand Canyon with the intent of spending the night at Vermillion Cliffs. Day two, a trip up and over the Escalante plateau. Day three, a loop back through Bryce Canyon and then head back to the truck.  I emailed the group with the details of the ride and some questions about optional side trips.  Stu replied with the usual, “I’m in.”  Ray, Matt, and Bob all confessed that they had no idea where they were going until I explained it on the truck ride up the 15 N.

A last check of the weather had snow showers on day two. Moto riding in the snow is pretty much unfun.  The plan would have to go into flex mode and sent the navigator recalculating on his slide ruler and charts for the optimum solution. :-) 

Leaving Friday morning, at one hour minus odark, we drove straight through California and Nevada on to Utah. The car ride was filled with stories of this and that but was punctuated with a story from Stu of an east coast college student who called Stu looking for a donation.  Somehow, a discussion ensued and Stu found out that the college student had absolutely no idea that there was a time difference between New York and San Diego.  This sent Stu ballistic with a tirade of how our nation was going to the dogs.  The rest of the trip was punctuated by one line zingers of other under-estimations.  

Our truck sped past the trip’s original drop zone and headed another hour to the trailhead of our favorite 5star Grand Canyon overlook.  

Ahhhh it was good to get on the bikes finally at 16:00. The trail was twelve miles of dirt but it was just what we needed to shake off all the travel time. And the reward was off the charts, just about the best raw overlook of the Grand Canyon. Matt and Bob’s first views of the canyon.  We were at a remote location near the head waters of the Grand Canyon, a sight that very few others ever get to see. We snapped dozens of selfies with the glorious view over our shoulders.
Matt used his GoPro camera to film a rock tossed over the edge. The hang time was unreal. Just watching the video was unreal and induces vertigo watching the poor rock plummet over the edge. Bob commented that he suspected the canyon to be at least a few hundred feet deep and maybe older than his father, perhaps even a hundred years old!  Going with his joke, we said that he probably would be able to jump the canyon on his moto if he got up to fourth gear and pulled a wheelie at the last minute ala Evil Knievel or even Joe Jackson’s no famous Ojos river jump.
       Our evening coasted to a perfect finish by sitting on the wooden porch at the Lees Ferry Lodge sipping on a few cold ones. We watched the sun set play on the colors of the vermillion cliffs.
The weather report for Saturday was rain and snow. We woke to a warm wind pushing in with a purpose. Our BATNA called for driving the bikes in the truck thirty miles.  We would ride a forestry dirt road back to the canyon overlook. The whole morning getting packed and driving went from bad to poor odds. We drove through two downpours. We almost made a ‘rational decision’ to cancel riding altogether, but then  we thought better of it and maintained our mantra, “What possibly could go wrong?”  

Arriving at the drop zone, we rushed to get the five dirt bikes unloaded. The wind doubled it's efforts to the point where we couldn't leave any doors of the cars open. It was a cold wind. Despite the high winds and dark clouds, what we kept one eye on was the white-out clouds pushing in behind them. We dressed in every layer we had. Despite our concerns, it felt great to get underway. Almost right away, we started to get "shotpeened" by micro hail. It hurt any exposed skin. After 15 miles, we stopped. We couldn't feel our hands from the wet cold. The smart thing would've been to cancel the ride. Stu jokingly said" I think the worst is over!"

We decided since it was only another 7 miles to the Canyon, we would push on. Surprisingly, conditions did start to improve! We arrived at the edge and without exaggeration, the view was even better than the day before. We made each other sick getting close to the edge. It seems it's harder to watch someone else take a risk than to take it yourself. Another dozens of photos and a few rocks tossed then we were back to riding.
Instead of returning the route we came, we headed north parallel to the canyon. The road was a rolling and snaking road. Off the throttle on the negative G down hillers with hard braking before the turn. Hard gas on the uphill. It was fun watching the guy in front of you. The ground was moist and a solid plume of dirt would roost out from the rear wheel when the guy was on the gas!  It looked like there was a dirt firehose shooting from the back of the moto. The power of the motor would just spin the rear wheel up to the point of traction.
 The road we chose kept getting tighter and tighter. Rockier and rockier. Our speed hardly slowed. And that made the young guys happy.
We ricocheted our way up a tighter and tighter dirt road until it came to a dead end. Hardly discouraged, we backtracked a quarter mile and started exploring another no name trail. We used the navigation method called " kinda going in the right way" (dead reckoning is not a popular name for obvious reasons). Our only concern was our fuel range.
Happily, our little road started to behave itself again and finally spit us back on the main dirt road back to the car. The clouds had cleared and it was a beaut of a day.  A quick check of the odometer and we had ridden about 32 miles that felt like 64 miles.

We were haplessly headed back to the truck when we spotted a dirt road at our 9 o'clock. It climbed from our plateau up to the Kaibab plateau. The Kaibab was another 2000 ft higher, into the pine trees.... And the snow.
Still, that road "had to go somewhere" and we couldn't resist it!
A detour was set. As we entered the road, I saw a sign.  We were riding so fast, all I could do was chance a glance at the sign.  My mind caught that it was 22 miles to something up this road.  ( so we were right!)
Throttles were twisted, rocks and dirt ejected, and we rocketed our way up the mountain. Eventually, we were racing along the edge of a pretty big canyon. I pondered a thankfulness that who ever broke this trail originally did so about twenty yards back from the edge. Since we were propelling up this crazy trail at over 40 mph, a little wrong bounce could become a really big problem.
In no time, we were up to the snow line. The group stopped to debate exactly where this road was going. The underlying concern was the 80 mile range of fuel for Ray's bike. As I pulled on my coat, I noted that we had already come 15 miles and that there was only seven more miles to get to "somewhere" and we really aught to go see it. We consulted the GPS oracle but it was silent on what this "somewhere" was. In fact, it showed that the road split into three forks. All three abruptly stopped before "somewhere".
Stu argued that the road would spit us out on the paved highway.

Our speed became slightly more conservative. We clicked off the miles still climbing in elevation. Some new roads finally appeared on the GPS. A quick check showed the bad news: Stu was right, we could take this road to the highway but it would be another thirty miles. We had hit our "bingo" (an aviator term that may mean "bad idea no gas onboard").  Back down the hill we shot!  It was almost 4:00pm. The lead team kept up a crazy velocity downhill. Stu and I were riding 'sweep'. At a more reasonable pace, we looked backed over our shoulder to see a whiteout storm boiling over the top of the mountain.
We finally joined the main dirt road, and like the road runner cartoon, made like little dirt rockets back to the truck.

At the end of the day, we had logged almost 100 miles and had seen some unforgettable sights.

Satisfied, we loaded the truck and drove an hour to a "cabin" that Stu lined up for us. We estimated that the cabin would only cost us $20 bucks each more which we could make up if we cooked our own dinner.

The cabin was not the usual spartan accommodations. A five bedroom place with a kitchen family great room. Stu made his signature spicy sausage spaghetti. We ate our fill and had home made brownies for dessert.
The snow started falling overnight. And we woke Sunday to everything covered in a white dusting.

To lighten our truck, we unloaded all the motos and made a beeline in the truck for Bryce Canyon since Matt and Bob had never been. Stu led us on a speed walk of Navajo loop.  The altitude has us all huffing and puffing.
Our ten hour ride home was longer than the ten hour ride at the start.
We filled the time with stories of our rides over the years and of all the crazy times and good friends.

Just perhaps, bigger than Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon all rolled together, are the great adventures spent with great friends and our sons.

Jim  

Sent from my bongo drum