Baptism By Fire, Colorado and Utah

Here is a ride report for my first big adventure, though not my first moto trip. I rode to Colorado from Oklahoma to meet up with some friends to ride some dirt roads in Colorado and Utah. I say this is my first big adventure, because this is the first time for me to head out so far from home with the bike fully loaded heading down and over and through some of the most amazing scenery in the world only viewable from back-roads!

Being the most green on this trip as the others had done countless trips before including The Continental Divide, The Trans-American Trail and Utah Backcountry Discovery Route to name a view. I felt privileged to be invited along.

I had every intention of taking a thousand pictures and making tons of videos, but quickly switched to SURVIVAL mode! Pictures took a back seat as I tried to keep the bike upright and I had trouble getting my Go-Pro to charge. Hopefully the others will post some pictures and Brad had his Go-Pro going most of the time.

Here is the original plan, but “there is the plan and then there is what really happens”.

Day 1 Glenwood Springs to Taylor Park - through Grand Mesa, Cedaredge, Hotchkiss, Paonia, Kebler Pass, Crested Butte

Day 2 CB to Ouray - CB to Taylor Park on pavement, Tin Cup Pass, Cumberland Pass, Pitkin, Ohio City, Parlin Hwy 50, Lake City, Engineer Pass to Animas Forks, Silverton, back-road or Hwy 550 Red Mtn Pass to Ouray

Day 3 Telluride to Moab, Gateway then John Brown Canyon

Day 4 Utah Backcountry Discovery Route- Moab to Cleveland - into the Lasals, Castle Valley, Dewey Bridge, Kokopelli's Trail, Green River

Day 5 Wellington, 9 Mile Canyon, Argyle Canyon, Soldier Summit (site of the famous crash), Currant Creek, Mill Hollow

Day 6 Mill Hollow to Evanston WY, Evanston to Garden City

About crashing… I crashed about 4 or 5 times and dropped the bike another 4 or 5 times. At times I became really frustrated, tired and out of breath in the high altitude. I broke a mirror, tweaked my side cases and bent a few things. The whole time my friends, three of whom are from Colorado, were kind, patient and full of helpful advice. I ended up turning my pre-load down but it was not until the second to the last day on the trail while rolling over some heavy washboard roads that figured out what was wrong besides my lack of experience. The heavy washboards were causing me to shift forward, it was like I was braking. I have been over lots of washboard roads before and this is when it dawned on me that something besides me wasn’t right. So I pulled over to the side of the road and adjusted my damper back down, which I had adjusted up before the trip. That made a 100% difference, and good thing because shortly after we once again hit some very rocky and technical areas, just like I was crashing on. Made it through the area with no problems even did a hairy river crossing! I can kick my self in the ass for that…

About almost dying… that only happened twice, one time on a tricky switch back on Cinnamon Pass I hit a rock which swung me around perpendicular to the road, and I’m not exaggerating I muscled me bike around just two inches from driving over the edge…

Below is picture of one of my side cases where it fell off during one of my crashes. Looking back at the pictures the roads never look as steep or as rocky as they really were.

I left Oklahoma and headed to Pueblo, Colorado to stay with my friend Bob on day one. He had just moved to Colorado from Oklahoma… He and his wife are the nicest people, I’m sad he moved away, and glad for him at the same time.

Here is my Princess camping overnight with a corvette...

The next day we took state highway 96 to Westcliffe to eat breakfast at a little Amish type bakery. The scenery sure changed on that ride. Bob went back to Pueblo and I head on to Glenwood Springs to meet up with the others

I think this is going over Independence Pass… Toto, were not in Oklahoma anymore!

I arrived at Glenwood Springs where Brad’s wife Jean treated my like royalty, and everyone made final adjustments to their bikes.

Here is a pic of Brad’s front yard, and backyard… Toto we are REALLY not in our little ghetto neighborhood in Oklahoma anymore!

Here is the Crew… Dave a wild Australian from Snowmass Village, Curt from North Carolina, Brad (The Ringleader) from Glenwood Springs, and Myself, Peter, the little dork from the flat-lands of Oklahellma. There are two others not pictured here who we meet up with on day two, crazy George from Nebraska and Al from Crested Butte.

Isn’t this scenery amazing! This is the beginning of the trip heading over Grand Mesa…

Dave had flat tire ... a little road side repair...

This river crossing is symbolic because this is where it all changes… This is an ATV trail 260, can’t remember the full name, maybe Brad could fill in the details. The pictures of Curt going across don’t tell the whole story of how steep the road going down to the creek is… see those rocks on the side of the road… that is what is under the water… no one took a bath, but my boots filled with water… This is where I switched to survival mode, as the road became very rocky and was the most challenging of the whole trip.

Well I survived, and we kept on to Crested Butte… One note: we went over Kebler Pass in the pitch black of night as we were running late. Kebler is nice dirt road pass and not very challenging though very scenic in the daytime… (I have been over Kebler before)…



This is the lodge on the ranch estate that Al runs… Here we add two more to the crew, George and Al are on the left.

As you can see from the background of these pictures, rain is a common theme for this trip. The last picture is at the beginning of Los Pinos Pass and Slumgullion pass… This was so incredibly beautiful even if it did start raining… I would love to see it in the spring or summer… Hopefully some of the others will fill in with their pictures…

It was raining in Lake City so we rented a little rustic cabin instead of camping, which was wise choice as it rained hard that night and would have been much fun holed up in our tents… Plus there was a bar with food and good beer on tap, a half a block away…!

On top of Cinnamon Pass, snowing-sleeting-raining... You should of seen the expressions of the folks on four-wheelers or in their heated four wheel drives when we showed up and we headed down. They looked confused and amazed at these idiots on motorcycles...




Going down it started snowing good...

When I got to this point, I thought it was going to turn into a recycling and gas mileage thread.

Funny how the meaning of green has changed so that the first definition is such.

Great report. thanks for posting it. I was in CO in 1993 for a 6 day trail riding advnture. I hope to return again.

Following along for the rest of the tale.

On top of Ophir Pass, I’m the only one without heated grips… The road down was amazing and scary… I hope someone else was smart enough to get some pics or video…



Looking down... and this the easy part... wish i had taken a pic of what is around the corner...



I think that is Al heading down the mountain

On the way into Moab wild Dave decided to get a jump on deer season and took out a deer! Actually the deer jumped out in front of him while riding down the paved highway. We were just a minute behind him as he was in the lead. My heart sunk when I came around the turn and saw his bike laying over in the middle of the road with bike parts laying everywhere, then I saw him standing up talking to a car driver who was more concerned if the deer’s wellbeing. Dave was talking and coherent but couldn’t move his right-side upper body. Ten minutes later two ladies from Moab pulled up with an empty trailer. One of them Debbie jumped out and took control, she loaded up Dave in the cab and we loaded the bike in back. They took Dave to the hospital and stored his bike until we could retrieve it the next day. Dave is from Colorado, so a friend brought his truck and trailer the next day, so Dave could get home. Believe it or not he had no broken bones! He will live to ride again!

Note: this is Dave’s second time to hit a deer.




That is Dave sitting down pain... and all of us in a daze not sure what to do yet... just a couple minutes after the wreck...





Check out the bumper sticker... she has a Blue Healer...

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/82141452@N06/8047189925/" title="IMG_0676 by Okiemotorrad, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8041/8047189925_dda329da2c.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="IMG_0676"></a>

We had to skip some parts of the UTBDR because of rain… here we are camped out at Starvation Lake in Utah.

We road a long time to get to this road closed sign… so we decided to keep going… We talked the road crew in letting us pass, three different times… The road construction was a bit treacherous, sure glad it wasn’t raining at the time. I think Brad has some video…