Trailering bike to Colorado for the July 4th Weekend

I've been up here a week. First couple of days high 80s and even 90's in mountains.... Then day temps ever since in high 40's and low 50's and rain along most of the BDR from telluride up to west of Denver. Hope you brought good rain gear! And yes...no such thing as finding hotels in the towns around telluride/ Ouray this weekend. And close to town camping with amenities limited. Even forest service roads closer to town areas, the by the road sites are rather full. Though normally not an issue to just make your own trail in to forest and tuck away for the night, careful of the saturated ground. Mountain areas have had flash flood warnings for the past several days along the SW end of the BDR

Riding the $M highway yesterday in the pouring rain was certainly some tense motorcycling!

Looks like the weather is picking up today though *hope*

Highly recommend u skip the small loop of the BDR that parallels 550. Mud and steep switchbacks, paricularly around the mine.

Also, I did the whole Alpine loop in the rain the day Friday. Oray, lake city, Ouray. Doable but recommend knobbies. Trail wing tires? Clay mud in sections along shelf road would be sketchy. Engineer pass from lake city to pass is not a problem. Pass to Ouray...very challenging. Many, many rock drop offs , ledges and rock drop offs and ledges in switch backs to. I sheared three of four bolts on my skid plate tying it up with large cable ties. I am not able to lift the front wheel to ride up a series of leashes with multiple 1-2ft drops per section. My 450 exc, yes. GS, no. Going down I banged through it. And I have top of line olines suspension set up for off road on the gs. I'd estimate that section between 2-3 miles. I lost my front brake too in this section. Couldn't hold back speed after doing drops in one switch back. Lost line...slide off side into tree about four foot down ravine. A few feet either side of tree...the bike and probably me would of been gone forever. As is a jeep pulled it up with a rescue strap I packed. FYI, engineer pass is not on the BDR route. There is a split on engineer pass, one way to Ouray, one to silverton. I learned later, the silverton section would of been ok. A KTM 690 rider I road with some ended up breaking his leg coming down engineer behind me after we split up. He was taken down in the dark by another jeep that was still out thw
There. My lesson....unless I've thoroughly researched other trails in advance, when on my gs1150 I should stick to the BDR. And, even the BDR route between Ouray and lake city is no joke. If u can't ride over steep extended sections of plate size sharp shale, execute right steep switchbacks with surfaces ranging from large shale, loose gravel and cement colored mud, take the work around. Granted, I did this section after several days of rain and flash flood warnings. I sure there was more skree (sp?) and mud then normal, but it's still only a few feet from sliding off the edge and never getting your bike back. Have fun. Stay safe. Time to fix my brakes and skid plate and ride this week too!

Thanks for the report Chase! I will be up there next week on my Tenere and will be modefying my route to avoid cr 18 from engineer/animas forks.