Adventures By Guy

Wednesday dawned and it was going to be a carbon copy of Tuesday. At 8 am when we left it was in the high 50’s and going to 80 and clouds would build up over the mountains later in the day then the evening would cool and clouds went away. The guys figured out a route while I got ready. I looked at the route. It had us going down the Burr Trail then going down the face of the Capitol Reef on the Burr Switchbacks. Then going north up Notom rd. Hey, Notom is sandy! Oh, not that bad like yesterday guy… yeah, ok. But it looks like we are going far enough north that it will hit the paved section. We can get there from 24. We aren’t going that far North. Ok… I had made it without biffing it on Sunday. All was good and then I did drop the bike. It just fell over as the front wheel sunk and I ended up standing over it. We got it upright and I got it out. Mike complemented me on how good I was getting at starting off in 2nd gear and duck walking the bike out of deep sand. Gee, thanks Mike! The rest of them then rolled past knowing where the soft spot was and they didn’t even sink in one bit. We kept going and it was a struggle at times. Hey, I see pavement up ahead. (I knew I was right!) We keep going and got to the road that we were to turn on to go towards the Henry Mountains… there was a lot of desert country between us and those mountains and the road was called Sandy Ranch Road! Mike! I thought no sand today… We went on and I was point man again. 400 yards in and I see a 10′ stretch of sand and proceed cautiously and as soon as I entered it my wheel sunk to the hub. I tried to power out but flopped the bike over. This time my foot was pinned under the soft saddle bag. I had to lay there until the guys came and got me out. (Good thing Mike convinced me to go to soft bags as he said… those hard bags will break your leg or ankle. It would have if I had still had the hard bags.) We picked up the bike and I powered out in 2nd gear… I was getting good at doing that!😉    Mike, I’m telling you… I don’t think this is a good idea!!! We continued on and there was a little sand… then some bad sand in a long stretch and a small water crossing after that. Ok, We all made it through that and we started climbing and that made us happy as no washes up high. Then we went down and had to fight our way through several stretches of sandy washes… Mike this isn’t looking good! We were in the shade of a cottonwood tree drinking water. Others were still enthusiastic about going on. Ok… sigh…
We started out climbing with me on point. Holy schnikeys this is getting sandy going up this grade. Phew, made it up and we continued on weaving and winding and being careful in the sand. I come around a corner and there is a pretty good incline with powdery gray silt finer and softer than SAND!
Silt, that stuff  that’s finer than sand and settles out in water. Well, this area was on the bottom of a body of water eons ago and that silt is a gray thick layer in all the mountains that were uplifted. I was facing a cut through a layer of this dried silt. It was deep… I could see as I approached that there were places where jeeps had gone through and left a tire run a foot deep with soft stuff mounded in the middle and sides . I headed for one of the tire ruts as I thought it would be a shallower strip. I was on the pegs and trying to climb but not spin the wheel and dig down. I made it up through the really deep area and I had to make an uphill 90° left turn. I leaned on the left foot peg and tilted the bike over while still giving it gas and I made the turn and saw that I was facing another 50 yds of this stuff. I made it to some bedrock and stopped. I waited and then waited some more. I parked the bike and walked back down in full gear and it was 81°. I turned the corner and saw that they were just lifting up Jared’s bike. He got on it and on the fourth try he started going and made it. Mike calls me over. Hey Guy, looking at the map we have another 30 miles of this type of stuff. I replied… I do not want to do that and then have to fight our way back through at the end of the day. We agreed to turn around. So Jared and I had to go back down through this stuff. We were getting ready when Mike said over our intercom that a truck was coming up through. Ok, soon a truck pulling a short old travel trailer and another trailer loaded with a Polaris razor churned his way right on up and around the corner. Wow! Now it was out turn… Jared went and made it. I went and made it to the deep stuff. A couple of desperate dabs with my feet and I made it too. Now we just had to make it out. Trevor a while back had told me that standing on the pegs in sand made it easier as you steer by weighting the pegs and the front wheel isn’t steering so much. I had been working on it and I was getting better… still it is an unsettling feeling when the bike is bucking around. It was a struggle to get out the 6 miles that we had covered coming in but we made it faster and nobody went down. We hit pavement and took off for Torrey as Mike needed gas and wanted to eat. We couldn’t believe all the people we were seeing on these back roads. We saw maybe one or two cars a day for the first two days. Today they were all over and the park was swamped. We left Torrey and headed west on 24 towards Bicknell. We left 24 four miles prior to Bicknell on Fish Hatchery rd. Aptly named as we went by a fish hatcher a few miles later. We headed over Boulder mountain via forest road. Topped out over 10,000’ and then came down Hell’s Backbone rd to Boulder, UT. Another day done and all participants were unhurt… I was talking with Loraine and she said… this sounds harder and more adventurous than your North Alaska trip. Oh, definitely!
Tomorrow we are getting up early to go see the sun come up over the red rock country.

Usually I take a bunch of pictures… but not this trip.  Most of these were taken by Jared, Trevor and Mike.