That wasn’t the section. We eventually got to it and it was every bit as hard as it looked. The rocks toss the bike around a lot and yet you have to keep your speed up to have any semblance of control. I wish I had pictures of it while riding, but my GoPro battery was dead and Tim and Dave had theirs turned off. It’s not a cliff on your left but it would hurt to get off the road so you have to keep your wits about you. I nearly went off and it was enough to kick my adreneline into high gear.
Fortunately I made it up without falling. I waited at the top for Tim and Dave. Tim fell and banged his right arm and left thumb a bit. Dave stopped to help him and they made it on up. The video I have of them coming up doesn’t make it look that hard, but by the time they reached where I was, the hard part was over. We stopped for a bit right there to collect our thoughts before moving on.
Tim:This was the section that I had been nervous about! We came upon what we thought was the big hill and we all managed it just fine.
My thought was “It’s not so bad!” That’s because that wasn’t the place! Coming up on the real one I was trying to decide how best to attack it. I knew I needed some speed so I started up fairly quickly. It wasn’t long before I was bouncing around a lot.
The next thing I knew the front end was sideways and down I went. I landed on my belly with the bike trapping my right foot. I had smashed up my left thumb a bit and hit my right forearm. So there I was laying like I was super hurt when Dave rounded the corner. He dropped his bike to come help me.
Unfortunately he didn’t have the presence of mind to take pictures first so my great crash wasn’t recorded! (There would be more opportunities later though).
After a bit of a breather to collect my thoughts and my pride I hopped back on the bike and tooled up to the top.
The rest of the ridge isn’t as bad as that rocky section and the views are pretty nice. At least it would be but for the haze from forest fire smoke that started creeping in from Canada. This was to ruin most of the vistas that we’d see through the week.
Tom Clark
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Intellitect, living in Spokane, Washington. I also do a little development work on the side. And I love riding motorcycles all over the country with my friends.
