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9th Annual Smokey Bear Dual Sport Motorcycle Ride 2017 - What Happened?

Earlier this year I went up Apple Tree on my 950. Lots of blow down on the lower section.
 
Day 5 - Friday, August 4, 2017.
Temperature range 52-70

We rode:
Bailey Canyon
La Luz Canyon
Fresnal Canyon
West Side Road
Alamo Peak Trail
Rio Penasco Road
Old Sunspot Highway
Willie White Trail
Prestridge Hill
FSR551
FSR257
FSR64
Rim Trail - parking area 2 to 1

Another great year, the weather reports even as late as Monday night were forecasting Tuesday, Thursday and Friday to be rainouts. My group only really got wet once, Monday afternoon at the end of the day. The only other time we encountered rain in the woods was late Thursday and we took shelter under a tree on Pumphouse Ridge while a shower quickly passed by. We discovered some new to us roads and trails but missed some of our favorites, next time.

Good to see, talk, kick tires, eat and ride with everyone. The dinners starting with Big Daddy's on Sunday night, to Taco Tuesday at the Western Bar to the unofficial banquet on Friday at Ski Cloudcroft allowed us to get to know each other and hear some GREAT stories like the Father and Son group that rode from daylight to dark and covered big miles (their enthusiasm was FANTASTIC!), or the rider that rode from San Antonio on his WR250R, yes RODE IH10 to US285 on his WR loaded with camping gear. Many more stories for the DOers to tell...GREAT YEAR and GREAT GROUP!

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAYf0iOAaFg"]9th Annual Smokey Bear Dual Sport Motorcycle Ride - Day 5 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuXDIHZfVuc"]Willie White Trail (T113) - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY4CpBiXl7o"]Willie White Trail (T113) 2 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQLGz5ZdfMw"]Forest Service Roads 257 .2 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bjCIDVj3tk"]Forest Service Roads 257 .3 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A48sD5DBsFk"]Rim Trail (T105) - Parking Area 2 to 1 - YouTube[/ame]

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And that's a wrap for me for the 9th Annual Smokey Bear Dual Sport Motorcycle Ride.
 
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Apple sauce canyon


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So, the views on top were really spectacular and a cool breeze was feeling so very fine after a long hard run up that mountain. Legs were still doing some of that tingly/shaky stuff but improving nicely by the minute. This was surely a happy place.

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BUT – Jbay was AWOL and looonnnggg overdue. As I sat there almost content, a bad feeling suddenly reminded me of another time in another place when a very competent rider had gotten deflected running a particularly rocky hill climb on a trail near Talihina.

Several of us had passed him as he was climbing back on his bike about halfway up. Some had offered sage wisdom about gravity, manhood and riding lessons as we went by.

We had all stopped after topping the hill and could hear his engine down below. The ragging and bragging among friends out on the trail was in full swing. But then, no more engine sounds. We waited. We all agreed he had to be on his way up. We waited way too long.

The guy collected some very high priced hardware in his leg after that day. The worst part of it all was getting him down off that trail without hurting him any more than he already was. Honestly, I still don’t know how it happened - just one of those off-road motorcycle things. We ride.

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And now JBay has suddenly gone quiet somewhere down below. I thought back to a tight and especially steep switchback with a pretty big step-up over some leg sized tree roots right about where his engine quit making noise.

I hollered down the hill several times – no response.

He was looking pretty tired when we stopped earlier. I shouldn’t have put him on this trail. I hate rolling up on folks lying near the trail next to a busted motorcycle. Man, it’s happened way too many times.

Aaaarrrggghh! Only one dang way to find out - gear up and go back down. Much as I didn’t want to, it had to be done.

Crap! This is an insane and stupid sport. We’re like a bunch of junkies always looking for our next fix…and hopefully finding something just a little more challenging. Little bit more danger involved - takes us just a shade past good reason and ability.

To be continued…
 
Crap! This is an insane and stupid sport. We’re like a bunch of junkies always looking for our next fix…and hopefully finding something just a little more challenging. Little bit more danger involved - takes us just a shade past good reason and ability.

Very well said! I can't wait for the next one!!!!
 
That's the trail I was expecting. Beautiful, flowing forested trail. It's seen some serious washing. Just rocks now.

That's too bad, the last time time I rode any portion of it was two years ago.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaRMnCS23lY"]7th Annual Smokey Bear Dual Sport Motorcycle Ride - Apple Tree Canyon Trail (T5601) - YouTube[/ame]

I hope to ride all of next year, even as is. The whole junkie thing...
 
Wow, looks like a great getaway! Thanks for sharing the pics & video for those who could not attend in person. Someone may have greased that hazard limb crossing Sander. I am looking forward to hearing more about it next Sat during breakfast.
 
OK, my imagination mixed with memories of past disasters and a hefty dab of fatigue was clearly starting to overcome reason.

I saddled up and pointed the front tire back down the mountain to see what was going on with JBay.

Maybe he’d stopped to take some picture… a whole lot of em - real slowly. Or, maybe he stopped to have a lengthy trailside picnic.

Yeah, right!

My biggest fear? How am I going to explain this to his wife without having her skin me alive?

It didn’t take long and, happily, I didn’t have to ride very far down before hearing his engine getting louder. Soon enough, here comes JBay cruising along. I looked for obvious leaks as he neared ( oil, coolant, blood ) - none to be seen. Bike’s still running about the same, handlebars still pointed well, helmet has no recent decorations added. He stops…

Yo! JBay, where you been? “I got tired so I stopped to lie down for a while.” Ahh… yes, of course. Could you pass me that stick over there, please?

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Well, he was OK. Nobody got hurt and all equipment was still intact. You have to admire someone who knows himself well enough and has the discipline to stop for a breather when the time comes. Probably would be a lot fewer bits of plastic left along the trail if we all did such things.

Moral of the story: cheap GMRS radios should be required equipment.

I went on back up to the top and found my shady spot once again. After another stop to rest, JBay finally came popping along.

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The trail splits – sort of – at the top with one well used track going left and another not so well used track straight ahead. Tripping the road less travelled seemed like way more fun.

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Problem was, the GPS track had a turn up the way that simply doesn’t exist and without any sign nor suggestion that it ever has. So, we just kept riding.

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Although the route has some spectacular views along the rim of this mountain, the trail became fainter and eventually disappeared altogether and we’d come a long way from that last trail split.

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This looked alot like one of those “just as far in as you are from far out” kinds of situations.

To be continued…
 
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Up on Alamo Peak


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Hiking the Rim Trail


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Here we are on the top of this mountain at around 9300 feet. We’re getting kind of tired and thin air isn’t helping with that. Seems like each new trail is taking just a little longer to complete than the last one did.

But, we had made it up to the top of Apple Tree canyon and now we needed to link up with the rest of this trail. At this point we’ve rounded the southern end of the loop and should start heading back northward.

Problem is, there ain’t a bloomin trail to follow nor a line on the GPS to guide us toward one. So, what do you do?

A. Admit defeat, turn around and backtrack to the last known trail?

B. Stop and explain to fellow riders that we’re hopelessly lost and ask for any ideas?

C. Surreptitiously glance at the GPS topo and continue following its contour line around the mountain (bushwhack) until you (hopefully) see your track show up on the screen somewhere up ahead?


Looking at the track record below, you can see for yourself which option our hero chose to follow.

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Yep, good ole fashioned cross-country bushwhacking. We rode through a beautiful forested meadow with all sorts of downed trees to go around. Luckily they were separated just enough that log hopping wasn’t needed.

Right around the time I was beginning to feel genuinely anxious about getting seriously lost, sure enough, the GPS track pops up and I can see a thin row of bare rocks in the distance suggesting an actual trail might exist.

YES!

We still had to navigate our way over to it but with only that small spark of hope, the job now seemed effortless.

What we found wasn’t much of a trail but it was headed in the right direction and would eventually lead us to the GPS track.

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It’s hard to verbalize the supreme ecstasy one feels in reuniting the little blue triangle (where you are) with our big fat Barney purple track line (where you wanted to be). As Yogi Bara once said “We’re still lost but making really great time.”

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The path became more obvious as we rode along until we were finally back on bonafide trail leading to an intersection with FR64. This would take us northwest to the trailhead of 1000 Mile canyon.

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1000 Mile canyon was beautiful flowing dirt two track the last time I had ridden it. Well, turns out, it no longer resembles that at all. Our greatest test of the day, and perhaps of the entire trip, would be 1000 Mile canyon.

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To be continued…
 
Yo! JBay, where you been? “I got tired so I stopped to lie down for a while.” Ahh… yes, of course. Could you pass me that stick over there, please?

:tab Been there, done that, one multiple occasions! One of them was the first time I topped Willie White Trail on a KLR... after a couple of drops on the way up. When I got there, I barely had the strength and time to get the kickstand down before I fell off the bike and just laid on the ground waiting for my heart to stop pounding like crazy! After about 15 minutes I was able to stand and look back down the trail... wondering where Rsquared and Wasabi might be...? We wound up having to back track and call it a day. On the next trip out there, when I was on my 530 EXC, we found out that we were fortunate to have backtracked before because the path forward and back down the mountain was MUCH worse! On that second trip, we did that last three miles on the South end of the Rim Trail... At one point all I could do was sit on my bike and hug the tree next to me because I was almost spent. Fortunately, we just had one more short descent before reaching the highway and I was able to just coast down. We both spent a while laying on the rock wall waiting for our hands to quit shaking :lol2:

:tab A few years back, Rsquared and I were exploring up in Montana, having broken off from the main group to potentially do some more technical riding. I was on my 530 EXC and he was on his 450 EXC. For much of the day, it seemed we would not be doing any really technical stuff... until we found the road from hades... We kept thinking, "Surely it can't go on like this much further...!?" By the time we realized it could, we were saying, "There's no way in the world I am going back through that! It has to end soon!!" We were fully loaded with camping gear and had just recently topped off our 6.6 gallon tanks! We eventually topped it and stopped. I lay on the ground trying to focus on my breathing until I could no longer count my pulse by watching the edges of my vision move in and out in time with it... The good thing was that Roger was laying on the ground not far from me so we could communicate :-P We eventually made it down off the mountain and headed straight for a hotel with a hot shower and soft bed!!

:tab On a trip to Arizona with Gotdurt back in 2007, I laid under a SKINNY cactus praying for shade and someone to save us from ourselves. Jeepers came to the rescue with A/C and ice cold Gatorade. The next day was spent laying in the shade next to the Gila river rehydrating and waiting for Gotdurt to return from Mesa/Gilbert with a friend that could get our bikes across the flooding Gila River. It was a good 24 hours before I felt right again. Rsquared and I went back with him in 2014. About three days in, we mutinied and refused to go further on one particular trail because just getting to where we were had almost wiped us out and we were barely an hour into the day!! After a nice long rest in the shade, we backtracked and took a less severe route.

:tab Fatigue is no laughing matter, especially when it is hot and/or the air is thin! Most all of my "get offs" over the years have been fatigue related. I try hard to stay hydrated, take regular breaks, eat enough, go EASY on the booze (at the end of the day), and pace myself when doing multi day rides. I just returned a few weeks ago from 8 days of 250-275 miles/day riding/camping in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. I was GLAD to be off the bike at the end of day 8!! :twitch: I don't sleep real well when camping so that just adds to the cumulative fatigue effect. Fortunately, we did do a cabin/motel a few nights along the way so I could get in some decent sleep! I blew the rule about going easy on the booze the night we stopped in Ten Sleep and visited Justin's brewery... but not as bad as the other guys!! :lol2: We got a pretty late start the next morning... :twitch:

But, we had made it up to the top of Apple Tree canyon and now we needed to link up with the rest of this trail. At this point we’ve rounded the southern end of the loop and should start heading back northward. ...

:tab Too funny! On that first trip out there with my 530, I was leading a good sized group toward Apple Tree Canyon from the other direction. We bushwhacked and backtracked a couple of times before we managed to make the connection and then continue on down Apple Tree Canyon. I think I have many of the same pictures you do of that spot where the trail picks up again! The actual trail was in pretty good shape when we did it, but there were a lot of big branches and some trees because of a storm that had come through in March and done a LOT of damage. We were there in late May and there were many trails that were closed because they had not yet been cleared or were in the process of being cleared.

:tab The thread is REALLY making me want to do another trip out there!!
 
My son and I attended and had an absolute blast. We teamed up with Jerry from Dallas area and Keith from San Antonio for 3 of the days. We rode hard usually 11-12 hours a day with very short breaks for a picture and a jerky snack.
It was my sons first off roading of any type. He has only been riding for about 4 months so he had a learning curve, but after a day he looked like a pro. He only had 3 offs at low speed. All due to large rocks knocking him off balance.
We did right at 700 miles of riding in 3.5 days.
If it had Canyon in the name I think we hit most of them. We did the NMBDR route from Weed to Westside before lunch on Tuesday. We went all the way to White Sands one morning to get a picture and pick up some spare tubes for Jerry's many front pinch flats on his GS800 (3 total).
We missed a lot of trails after coming home and marking up the map and rating the terrain for future reference.
We usually meet other riders during breakfast or dinner. We really enjoyed meeting everyone and look forward to going back next year.
If you haven't been to Cloudcroft put it on your to do list. The number of trails is overwhelming at first if I'm being honest, but we managed to get familiar with it after a few days.
 
Well, 1000 Mile Canyon ain’t what it used to be and that’s about the nicest way I can say it.

If evidence of an abnormal year of high rainfall hadn’t been obvious thus far, here it was before us in living color. Dirt – mostly gone. Rocks – yeah. Fallen trees – plenty. And, as an added bonus we have this knee deep trench running right down the middle of the trail from top to bottom. It’s like somebody went in there with a backhoe and dug this straight walled monster all the way down the mountain. Both sides of the trail angled to funnel everything right into the ditch.

Avoiding that trench meant weaving back and forth across it - jumping the thing numerous times on our decent and several spots didn’t really lend themselves to doing that.

It is entirely possible to ride this trail and was even a lot of fun doing so - in a sadistic sort of way but…

There were two very important details that I didn’t know right then.

One – Jbay had a broken rear brake line, no brake fluid and thus no rear brake.

Two – His motorcycle has a Rekluse auto clutch.

And, we’re going down a pretty steep hill washed out so bad that berm surfing is an absolute necessity.

So, imagine now trying to point your front tire across this ditch on a trail that’s maybe four feet wide with rocks out the wazzoo, no rear brake, steep downhill angles, you’re just about exhausted – oh – and you have zero engine braking. Sounds like a real hoot, eh?

I took one look at the trailhead and started to bail on this one – might should’ve anyway. But, I didn’t.

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Once we made it down the mountain we’d run right into pavement. Then it’s just a smooth scenic waste of good engines, tires, gasoline and time all the way back to camp (No, I don’t like pavement).

Pretty steep, it’s downhill, loose rocks, gravity being what it is – we’ll make it to the bottom one way or another.

Soon as we turned the first corner the trail dropped over the hill, the trench appeared and turning back on those rocks wasn’t about to happen. You are committed. So now, friends, we ride motorcycles.

To Be Continued…
 
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Well, 1000 Mile Canyon ain’t what it used to be and that’s about the nicest way I can say it.

Soon as we turned the first corner the trail dropped over the hill, the trench appeared and turning back on those rocks wasn’t about to happen. You are committed. So now, friends, we ride motorcycles.

To Be Continued…


Woohoo!



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was anyone on a drz on this ride? I go ride up there often and I took my drz for the first time in june. it ran really bad, I'm going back in September and would like to know what jets are best up there. I have a 39 pumper carb, full exhaust, and 3x3 mod.

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No experience will a DR-z. For my XR400R with a pumper carb I usually drop 2 sizes on the main and went 1 size smaller on the pilot this year. I was a little lean, I'll probably just drop one size on the main if that next year. The guys I ride with on WR450s don't even rejet and get away with it. Of course every bike is different, sometimes even the same make and model, and mods.

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jetting by AvantMotorcycles, on Flickr
 
No experience will a DR-z. For my XR400R with a pumper carb I usually drop 2 sizes on the main and went 1 size smaller on the pilot this year. I was a little lean, I'll probably just drop one size on the main if that next year. The guys I ride with on WR450s don't even rejet and get away with it. Of course every bike is different, sometimes even the same make and model, and mods.



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jetting by AvantMotorcycles, on Flickr



Thanks, I have taken a cfr230, xt250, and xr650l all up there and never rejetted. They all ran fine with a little power loss. That's why I was surprised when the drz ran so bad. I think it's just too rich to begin with. I'm pulling the carb this weekend and starting from scratch.


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