Sibirsky Extreme 2012 - The Toughest Ride of Them All

Great stuff as usual, I've been reading your reports for a couple of years now Walter, thats why I smile, and admire your patience, when replying to posts where people suggest you took the wrong bike/shoes/helmet/gloves/luggage/tent/oil/tyres/socks/underpants etc. I'd be fairly happy to go with your setup.

If ever find yourself on the road between Irkust and UU a must is the smoked fish from lake Baikal - fantastic and sold all along the roadside. Also the wild strawberries, better than anything you have ever tried.

This RR surely raises yet more questions than answers...

Quick one for all who run the dual bixenon setup,
35 or 50 Watts?
If bike to bike is different, how much better are the 50's?

And a separate question to Walter,
just to reiterate, the 4 Sibirsky and one Moroccan expeditions of yours - has your bike been running still on the original clutch and fuel pump?? :eek1

what is "the 110"? both you, and the Estonian video, mention it.

due to the generic nature of "110", google is not being helpful...

After crossing the Vitim, taken a swim in the Kuanda and finally crossing the Kuanda on the back of a truck, I was pretty shoot when we came to Balbukhta. We went inside the rail road station and the kind people there gave us some tea and biscuits before they closed down the station. No sleeping inside tonight.

Knackered I got my tent up and headed inside. Every night I had the same procedure. Of the Norwegians I was the only one with a Mac. Therefore I collected all the memory cards and download the pictures and videos. I then took a quick look at what we had captured that day and made backup to an extern HD. When this was done Erik came and said they had a fire going down by a stream, but I was to tired to join and took an early night.

I had crossed the Vitim River on my XC. A goal I've had for two years. I needed to be alone in my tent that night. I needed to contemplate all that had happened. Let it sink in. I soon fell asleep.

Some camp pictures below taken by Steve

I run both on my XC. One of my ballasts was dead so I had to replace it. Not that much of a difference.

In adition I have a set of Denali D1 LED lighting. These are great and very bright. I use them all day to be seen.

Sorry, I didn't find neither anything useful with a quick google-search. As it is related to the BAM, I'll tell a bit, what I know of it.
The 110 is a so called simnik (winter road), that connects the Barguzin valley (on the east side of Baikal) to Novoj Uojan. It is said to have been built while the BAM was in construction and one year (or winter) they were not able to transport all the necessary things over lake Baikal to the construction sites. Therefore a quick solution had to be found and this provisional track from Ulyonkhan (in the Bargusin valley, the first ford is at the spa Umchei) to the BAM. They built some big bridges, but a lot of them have rotten (so it is very BAM-style). The first 100 km are running now in a national park, where they have recently maintained the road a bit, but the main obstacles, two fords over the Bargusin are still challanging, when you have not low tide. After the 100 km the road gets worse, with big stones and one time you have to run for 2 km in a stream. After 180 km you land at a good road in Kumora, that leads to Novoj Uojan.
In summer you have only few traffic, some trucks, that are bringing goods into the Barguzin valley and the stretch is also liked by Russian offroaders (it is the missing link to circumnavigate lake Baikal). But you can really get stuck there. In 2011 we met some Latvians, that needed over 10 days, because their Uazik broke down and they had to walk out to organize a big truck ( website). I think because of the fords and the big stones it might be less used by motor cyclists, but this year I heard that some motor bikes did use it.
You can see some pictures in our (german) travel report (I hope the link is permited). But we were not able to do it entirely, because of time constaints (train and plane tickets) and high waters.
In winter the simnik seems to be used more heavily and people in the region know well, when you are talking about the schtodesjaty (=110).

Hi Pamirski, just seen your photos,didn,t realise you were on cycles.You have my upmost respect !

Indeed. So, bicycles - the ultimate conclusion to weight reduction?

Thank you Terry, but you knew it, we have met in Yakutsk, the first evening with Adrian.
But I have to return the respect, as I think I would not make it with a motor bike, handling is for sure more demanding and also the whole repairing stuff would bother me (on a bicycle you have less parts that can break).

@igormortis, indeed they are lighter (and they may turn the driver lighter ), especially for flying it is cheaper and easier, we usually come through with 25 kg on board and 10 kg in the cabin (bike and baggage alltogether) and on the BAM it would be easy to catch a train (I used one for Uojan to Kuanda, as I already knew the stretch).
On the other hand, when I look at the RR in Western Russia and Kazakhstan (where speed means fun), I wouldn't like to ride it on a bicylce.

Christian

Props & Respect

Pretty damn nice camp shots - you sneak up on us in camp? haha

Pamirski - thank you for the info on the 110!

:d

You see Christian, that night we went to the Chicago Pub and ended up in the Europa Club

For some unknown reasons there are some black holes from that day

10 watts ......900 lumens....Amazing

Belt up, you great poof.

You'd have been sobbing on a sat phone looking for a blooming helicopter.

Rod, I'd like to thank you for everything you contributed to the RR. And it was a nice touch leaving Terry your pink slippers.

I actually dont know anyone who has done the 110 on a motorcycle ... I know some Russian guys who have been talking about it.

One of the hardest things about it, is the unpredicability of the height of the river. If its high, you may have to wait days ... if you get caught up in a 2 week cycle of non stop rain, you may have to wait weeks.

Hopefully you would get some truck to take you across in that time, but you never know.

The only other river I know which has that show stopping ability is the Kyubeme river at the start of the Old Summer Road, but at least there if its too high you can just take the Federal Road - you do have a choice. Additionally, you KNOW that trucks have to get through once every couple of days at an absolute minimum, to keep Tomtor supplied. Obviously anywhere on the BAM if water levels are too high anywhere, you can backtrack to the nearest mini station and get on a flatbed train - or as was the case for us at Kuanda, hire a local truck.

But on the 110, you are much more dependent on luck regarding the river. Your only options are to ride thru it or hope an empty trayback truck appears.

Russian 4WDs consider it (the 110) a bit of a holy grail.

Hi Walter

There is nothing too crazy, Russians wouldn't try.
I just tried to find some links, but you have to search by cyrillic letters and finally found some motor bikers (and even a video). http://djebel-club.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=4962 has in the first post some links (mainly 4x4 and pushbikes, in the last report you see photos of one motorcycle in a bunch of 4x4, for a quick impression of 110 in fair conditions the first video is good).
In another post this video (34 min) is linked (around Baikal by motorbike, so they did the 110):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj2MD90QF4w
They also had to rely on a crawler to bring them over the Bargusin.

But perhaps we should wait to discuss the 110 until another Sibirsky RR

Anyway it is an alternative to gain the BAM, but not without risk (we had to wait 3 days at the ford and then turned back. Over the first ford a guard of the national park took us over with his inflatable rowing boat. Before we got back to Uljonkhan the first truck after 5 days going in our direction was so kind to give us a lift).

So back to the RR, the small stations are at most manned only during the day and then closed. Between Kuanda and Chara only Leprindo seems to be manned (station is not directly at the road). This year Sjulban (next station after Balbuchta) was manned because they were working in the region and the workers slept in a train that was based permanently there.