Our great summer dirt bike camping trip of 2010 got a little derailed by the weather last weekend. A 70% chance of rain meant cold, muddy, and wet tent and put the kibosh on any plans of heading to Helen's. Thus plan R was suggested. It all came to fruition and by Saturday 5:45am, it was go time, rain or shine. 

 

I woke as I do on most action sport hero weekends, jittery and excited about the promise of a new adventure. Only twisted with a slight air of pessimism brought on by that hellstorm that rocked my roof all night. We headed east with the keeping of fingers crossed. Clinging to hopes that the rain cloud hell of 4am was long gone, pissing on someone elses weekend plans, much more deserving sinners than ourselves.

 

Thoughts of rain clouds drifted far from my mind as the dirt sprawled in front of my eyes. Just a mile or two from the launch point, I was instantly captivated by some of the views from the seat of my bike. I spend most rides heads down in the trees for 10's oh, 20's of miles, and the views only come every 10-15th mile or so. It was a nice change up to catch them high mountain views almost immediately. I'd be kinda romantical if you weren't hanging out with a bunch of fat sweaty old dudes covered in mud.

 

 

We'd assembled a hearty crew for this adventure and took to meandering through the rain soaked forest, stopping to take in the sights at what is to be known as Picnic Ridge.

 

 

This weekend moto adventure was attended by Ken, your's awesomely, Mike (taking this photo), OneNut Jonny, and Max. Max is a pretty ripping little dirt bike dude. Can't help the cliche, but he makes this snot gutter look like shall I say, child's play. Lets just say not everyone made it up this one so clean.

 

 

On we rolled stopping here and there to thrown a few random fist pumps on some big ass rock for no apparent reason at all. Weekends are made for being as nonsensical as possible sometimes. After all, we pretty much are going out randomly into the wilderness to get lost sometimes.

 

 

This brings me to a somber note. A few laws of nature must always be kept in mind while riding, 1) Water does funny things to the consistency of dirt, depending on the dirt and level of water of course. 2) What one goes down, might have to be gone up. With these two facts in mind, you can avoid many sticky or slicky trail riding situations, we unfortunately did not have such for-sight. And when you least expect it, or lets just say you fuck with mother nature by ripping a trail in the wrong place, she unleashes the motherfucking smoke monster.

 

 

I'm not quite sure of all the details, but something about a muddy climb made Onenut lost his shirt and my knee is now swollen like a the free nitrus tent at dead show.

 

 

Sometimes you just gotta shake that shit off and roll on, go climb some something else and get it out of your system.

 

 

More adventure ensued and some more hills climbed, this time all to the thanks of mother natures pissing session. Coal slate is actually quite climbable with a nice rain pack to it.

 

 

So more climbs insued, here Oneshot thows down is first test ride up. 

 

 

What was this? Another smoke monster attack? Oneshot claims it, but man I was following pretty close on this one, looked like he just drove straight off the trail to me.

 

 

After another hellstorm Sunday afternoon we went out for one more brief ride, hung out under some more cool ass big rocks, which would've been another nice place to take a lady friend.

 

 

With my butter knee killing, made one more snot climb and called it good. I really like some of the riding out in plan R, could due with a slightly less snotty consistency of the mud for my girly skills, but yeah. Rad times for sure.

 

Big ups for Sister Tara, Mike, and tour guiding by Ken, that and Max routinely showing us how it's done.

 

ADDING: a couple more pics form the sister collection






Waiting for the rain to settle down.....



THE END...