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Moab Mar 2015

Started by Hank, March 22, 2015, 10:07:09 AM

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Hank

We took off from Watertown on Saturday 3/14/15 at 4am sharp.      Duffer, Me, Paul and Mike, who we picked up in Clark on the way through.

We drove steady and got to Moab about 8:45pm, unloaded and settled in to our Rim Village Condo.

A little about the riders - Mike (DDSR name - Oscars) grew up riding dirt bikes (and street bikes), but hadn't ridden much for 20 years, and Paul (DDSR name - bikeless) is pretty new to dirtbikes but really experienced on street bikes.   Paul rode my DRZ at one DDSR rally with no issues though, so nobody was completely green.    We all know about Duffer (ha ha), he'll try anything and make it through most of the time at a pretty good clip.    Me, I know when to say when, but generally get through what I try, although not that fast, and damage is always a strong possibility.

Mike rode a well setup DRZ400E, Paul a sweet WR250F, Duffer on his trusty XR650R, and me on my 400XC-W.

Sunday morning we got up, had breakfast, got our trail stickers and gassed up, and headed out to Steel Bender, which was only about 3 miles from the Condo.  Steel Bender isn't supposed to be a hard trail (relatively speaking), so I figured it would be a good place to warm up.    It turns out it was generally pretty moderate, with a handful of challenging (but completely doable) spots and a couple nasty ledges (the wall and the fall).    We got through all of them, with a little teamwork, and had a blast. 

Witches step is a tough spot to climb but it has a bypass.    I got near the top and turned around, the last set of ledges wasn't huge, but I was pretty sure I was going to crash if I tried it, and it was too early in the week to disable my bike.    Duffer gave it a go and made it, but not without breaking a clutch lever.   Unfortunately I didn't get that spill on video as it sounds like it was a good one.. over backwards kind of thing.     I went back down and Paul, Mike and I took the bypass.     Duffer used a vice grip as a clutch lever the rest of the day.

I put together a "highlights" clip of Steel Bender here:



After Steel Bender, we headed up to the Sand Flats area, bought a weekly pass, and jumped on the Slick Rock trail.
We rode the practice loop, and started into the main loop, and two miles in Duffer snapped a foot peg.    It must have been damaged in a previous dump.   So, we turned around and rode back out as we had 6 or 8 miles to finish.   I didn't take any video on Slick Rock.

So Duffer was now riding with a vice grip for a clutch lever and a partial footpeg.  We called it a day and turned to burgers on the grill and cocktails.





More to come..

tannerc

Shit yeah!! That BRP took a bit of damage!! :evil

One of these days, I am going have to get down there on two wheels. I need to retire because I have so many places I would like ride!

I cant wait to see some more!   :)
"Retreat, hell! We're not retreating, we're just advancing in a different direction."

Hank

#2
That wasn't quite right.  Duffer broke his foot peg later.  The first day he broke a foot peg bolt on the other side.   But the rest is correct, we rode out of slick rock with Duffer on one footpeg.   It's all a blur as Duffer was breaking shit left and right.. haha!

Day 2 started off with some repairs.  Duffer found a clutch lever in town, got the foot peg bolt extracted at a buggy shop.

Then we headed back to the Sand Flats and jumped on Hell's Revenge.    We rode the entire jeep loop and all the bike spurs.  Super fun!  Nothing that was hard, but plenty of pucker moments on some crazy steep inclines and declines, and plenty of narrow fins.    The video doesn't show the slopes very well, like always.   I found the "devil's tail" hill climb around the 6:20 mark to be especially pucker inducing.



I threw my bike on the rocks a couple times there as you've seen.  Once was really stupid, hung in neutral as I rode up a little knob.  Doh!  That ends momentum in a hurry.

Hank

After Hell's Revenge we headed right up to Fins N Things which is maybe a mile up the road.

This trail was a lot of fun.   It wasn't difficult, but had a nice mix of slick rock, some gnarly rocks, and some sand.   We decided the "Things" were deep sandy spots.    It had some long smooth slick rock fins and our confidence in how to ride on this stuff was growing, so we started to get into the throttle a little more.     There were a couple of really abrupt steep climbs that caused a few issues, but mostly because they took you by surprise.



It was in here that Duffer's left foot peg let go.    He finished out the trail on a partial foot peg and we called it a day and headed back to the condo for burgers and cocktails.

Hank

We decided that Tuesday would be an "easy" day with a run out to Chicken Corners and then a trip through Kane Creek Canyon on the way home.

My family and I drove rental Razrs out to Chicken Corners last year, so I knew what that was about.   Its a fairly long scenic trip.  Nothing technical at all, but lots of great views and HUGE cliffs.

A few pics of the Chicken Corners trip:













Duffer did not break anything on his bike, but he did break his tooth at Chicken Corners.  The box of Sprees in his hand was the culprit.   I finished them for him because it seemed like the decent thing to do.

Chicken Corners is an out and back trip (not a loop).  About 2/3 of the way back to town we headed up Kane Creek Canyon.   

Kane Creek, I expected to be easy, and it was for the most part.    The small part that was tough, was REALLY tough.    The first 60% was rolling trail along the creek, plenty of rocks and sand, but it wasn't hard.   Later we got into the creek crossings.   I think there are around 50 water crossings, at least according to one guide.  It was very fun.  Towards the end we hit a nasty rocky hill climb.   Real nasty.  Several Razrs were stuck half way up and struggling to get through.

Duffer attempted it and got up with a couple major wipeouts.     I tried, got past the first bad spot at great cost to endurance and gear, and said screw it and went back down as someone at the bottom told us there was a bypass.   The bypass was a little goat trail along the creek that was pretty cool and it led to a gnarly stream crossing that required us to lift our bikes down a ledge.   



The trail was rough after that, but passable.  The lower bypass had a bridge at one creek crossing that was cool.   

A bit later there was one more nasty crossing/rock climb that wore us out.   From then out is pretty easy, more water crossings and sand.

Most of the good stuff can be seen in the vid.

Here is the hill climb from hell:




Bogus Jim

I wonder how many fatalities there have been in Moab over the years. On some of those cliff-side trails there isn't a lot of margin for error. I know there was a jeep that went over the edge on Black Bear Pass in Colorado, 2 dead.

Looks like you had a good time. As far as the bike damage... bike parts are a lot easier to fix than body parts.   ;)

grubbie

Love the pics, thanks for sharing.

greatbuffalo

That last trail looked like a blast. So jealous. I'm thinking a September trip my be in the cards.
Did I ever tell you: " I HATE MUD!" ?

Hank

GB I just remembered the "doo" tools, AGAIN.   I'll throw in my favorite Moab trail book for your review along with the tools.

When I was picking trails for this trip I did my best to avoid anything that was too "cliffy".    There are always edges in Moab, but some trails of course are way worse than others.    Some have you on a 4' wide gnarly set of steps with a vertical wall on the left and a 600 foot shear drop on the right.   That's not for me.   I make plenty of mistakes when I ride and I don't need a minor mishap to be the end of me.   

The last day we rode Metal Masher which goes along the canyon rim right above Moab proper.    It was pretty neat, but there was a good cliff.   The trail was wide enough that it wasn't too scary, though.     I'll get to those vids and pics eventually.

Next up is the Poison Spider Mesa, where we rode through 3 trails back to back.   Poison Spider, Golden Spike, and Gold Bar Rim.    This was an amazing ride but did earn us our only significant injury.    Mike is still limping a bit.      I'll hopefully get through those videos this weekend.

I also have a bunch more pics I'll post, as well as GPS tracks.

greatbuffalo

Don't worry about the tools. I bought my own. No worries.
Did I ever tell you: " I HATE MUD!" ?

Hank

On Wednesday we hit the Poison Spider Mesa which has 3 connecting trails.    Poison Spider, Golden Spike, to Gold Bar Rim.   You can't get to Golden Spike without riding one of the other two.    The three trails together make a real nice afternoon ride.  There is also a spur called Rusty Nail but after doing some reading we opted to avoid that one as it supposedly has some ledge sections with a million foot cliff right along the side.

The day earlier, during one of Duffer's daily parts run, he and Mike ended up at Arrowhead motorsports, which is owned by Fred.    If you've spent any time around KLRs or KLR specific forums, you've probably heard of Fred as he's a bit of a legend.    He claimed that the Poison Spider Mesa was going to kick our asses as it was MUCH harder than Steel Bender or the Sand Flats Area.    We braved it anyway and fortunately it was well within our abilities, and a LOT of fun.  There were some tough spots, but nothing that I'd consider too ridiculous.  The gnarly rock mess uphill on Kane creek was far worse than than anything we found out here.

I'll break this into one video chunk per trail section.    This first piece is Poison Spider.