Newsgroups: rec.motorcycles.dirt

In rec.motorcycles.dirt, cooper@kdx200.enet.dec.com writes:

> I'll trade Colorado rocks for Red River mud ANY day.
> 
> The rocks are BRUTAL here!!
> :-)

I'll certainly second that.  Great story Jeff.  A clear  demonstration  of
inherent masochistic tendencies.  I've had similar rides at a local riding
area in Lefthand  Canyon.  Lefthand has the most brutal  rocks that I've
ever riden.  One of my most memorable rides there was a little over a year
ago.

I'd been feeling poorly the day before the ride.  It was either a touch of
the flu, or mild food poisoning.  Suffice to say that I needed a seatbelt
when visiting the bathroom.  Large doses of little white pills stemmed the
flow to the point where I felt I could go riding without any embarrassing
accidents.  

The morning of the ride I met up with the other riders at the trailhead.  I
knew I was in deep trouble when I was the only four stroke rider there.
The others were riding CRs, RMXs, and KTMs.  Most of these guys were A and
AA enduro riders.  One of them, Dennis Larrett, is a former ISDE team
rider.  Following Dennis on his CR250 made the worst trails look like
childs play. 

We started the ride with a climb to the top of the ridge on some goat
trails.  Not only were these trails major rock fields, but many sections
were a ledge only 10 inches wide on the side of a mountain.  Because of a
forest fire several years ago, many of these slopes had severe exposure if
you were to leave the trail.  

After Dennis thought that we were warmed up, he headed for the Sidehill
trail.  I'd been riding Lefthand for years and not known that this trail
existed.  He knew just where to leave the road to pick up the faint traces
of a very old single track.  It led us across numerous narrow ledges and
dropped steeply into the bottom of a canyon.  I doubt that anything short
of a trials bike could have made it back up that path.  During many of the
sections, I killed my engine so that I could use the clutch as a rear brake
in order to have both feet available for stability.  

When I reached the bottom, Dennis and others were lounging about.  It was
at this point that Dennis knick named my bike Shamu, the killer whale.  I
couldn't have agreed more.  

The others were kind enough to let me cool off for a while before we
proceeded.  The next mile led us further down the valley bottom on a faint
trail over 2-3 foot boulders.  At a turn in the valley, Dennis rode up a
wet grassy draw to the right.  Hey, looks easy.  If you can keep any
momentum that is.  The hillside was littered with old fallen trees and
slippery rocks.  We had to either ride up this hill, or return the way we
came.  Traction was either not enough or too much.  Just as I would start
to build momentum, the front end would rear up.  After much pushing,
spinning, and swearing, we all made it to the top. 

From here, we proceeded down Coyote gultch.  After that was Mother F**ker.
I can imagine how this last trail received it's name.  After wrestling down
a long rocky single track, it dumped out onto an old 2-track.  Any vestige
of topsoil had long since been removed from this trail, leaving the
underlying boulders completely exposed.

In order to successfully ride through large rocks, you need to maintain a
certain amount of momentum.  At this point I was too tired to maintain
control at the necessary speeds.  My path must have looked something like
an errant ping-pong ball bouncing from rock to rock.  

When we returned to the trucks, it was all I could do to get my bike loaded
onto the trailer and pull my boots off.  

Total mileage for the day?  Somewhere around 19. 

-Jeff Deeney-  KotD #0000  DoD#0498    NCTR    '88 XR600-Shamu   
jld@hpfcpe.fc.hp.com       AMA#540813  COHVCO  '81 CB750F-Llamaha 
Dirt bike riding is perfectly safe; I have the scars to prove it. 

P.S.  Got out riding in the mountains on Wednesday.  Snowing heavily, 
temperatures in the 20's.  Icy drifts 2-3 feet deep.  In other words, 
perfect conditions.  Ice screws worked great, but half of the ones in the
back tire need to be replaced.