I loved reading all about this cool trip and seeing the great pictures. Makes me want to change a few things on my bike and do the same thing...Thanks for sharing this trip with us.
Thanks - there's a bit more. HA! Day 6 - There was a huge mine down the mountain and barely in sight from our camp. All night long you could faintly hear some big machine grinding away on a project. Slept like a king but I awoke at about 4:30 am and snapped this pic. There’s Jim’s tent. My VE25 rain fly worked out great as it didn’t rain and there were no bugs at all. No poles, lines or stakes to put away, just jam it into my drybag and strap it on the back. Might just be onto something there! Leaving camp, we all elected to ride this extra credit climb to the summit we were camped beneath. Several of us picked the absolute wrong lane and bashed Nevada stones to the top. Great way to start the day! You can see part of the mine way down there on the left, ‘town’ was in the drainage to the right of that. It’s already warm and looks to be hot today. This is the general direction we’re headed. Kenny and Colin have graciously volunteered to put together a route for us and did a great job navigating on the fly. more . . .
Tony Didn’t mention this earlier but Tyler’s shock is blown? He’s consistently up front so I don’t see him very often but when I do that thing is kinda wallowing all over the place. Today is spectacular and we got a decent start. I could see this canyon from quite a way back and hoped we’d be going through it. You can see the rider just coming out of the greenery. Would’ve liked to poke around here for a bit but we’ve got quite a ways to go today. Ken and Colin did a great job navigating and found some of the best tracks of the last couple days. Tony picked up a nail. While those guys slipped a 21” tube, I patched his 18” rear for later if needed. Sure was nice having instant access to the tools and tubes without unpacking the whole kit. We’re back on track for Paradise and headed through this breaks country. Another one of those strange places with no fuel or sense of humor, but it is beautiful. We talked about having lunch here but wanted to keep moving, grabbed a snack and headed back up into the mountains. Leaving town. Back on big gravel roads, we torched this one up into cool mountain air. Jeremy’s riding like normal - he must not be too injured. Tony’s back in the flowers! Strange rock formation up near the first pass. Pockets, cracks and bulges - wonder if anyone ever climbs this crag? It’s dusty today and we’re spread apart fairly far.
We’re getting close to McDermitt, NV and the end of the trip. Another reason we didn’t take the time to have lunch in Paradise was to give us the chance to ride the 25 miles of ridge top north of this pass. Jim and I had done once before, I think Ken has too but it’s not easy to figure out. Absolutely beautiful weather up here. Looking south. This will be our last major summit at almost 9000’. More snow! Even having been here prior, we still got tangled up with a few wrong turns and had to back track a little bit. Kenny’s probably looking forward to not leading. We put that together well enough and rolled down to the last water of this mountain range. Thanks again to Colin and Kenny for navigation! Jeremy’s laughing as it’s deeper than it looks and there's a ledge on the exit. Down through Devil’s Gate and towards McD. Amazingly, it’s still not too hot and staying out of the dust is not too hard either. We gas up in McDermitt, and head west out of town to get back into Oregon. A brisk and rocky traverse of the final mountain range drops us into the last of the water for this trip. No biggie but apparently Jim did tip over in the mud. I came back through here the next week and saw his hand print in the mud. Colin - So we roasted the track down to a big gravel road where we had agreed to split up. These fellows are going to ride back to Fields, load up their bikes and drive home to the Seattle area. I’m scheduled to spend another week out here with a different group of friends.
Hope this tire can handle another 800 miles. It was fantastic trip with some top notch riders, old and new friends. See you guys up in Washington for more! ps. turns out Jeremy's achilles tendon has been torn off for the last 5 days. Talk about a tough mofo! I had 160 miles for this day and they put another 40 on top of that to get back to Fields.
