Crossing the rockies on dirt; a KTM 690 test!

[rickypanecatyl]

I've alway wondered if it was possible to cross the rocky mountains on just dirt roads and this week the perfect opportunity to explore came up. I've recently moved to Boulder, Colorado but need to go to Sacramento to do some teacing at a school for 3 days. Instead of flying I thought I take the KTM 690 enduro and spend a few extra days camping along the way.

I also thought it would be the perfect test to see if all the bugs were worked out of my bike. Some of you may know since I got the bike 10 months ago it left me stranded on a California to Canada trip, wrecked a planned trip to Mexico/Central America by dying the week before I left and my first RR (I learned how to post pics on that report and I'm still so proud )

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=430950

tells the story of when I did take it to Mexico and got stranded there a few weeks. Since then, KTM North America sent one of their top experts out, totally went thru the bike and it is running excellent now! By the way, when it is running, it is one of the funnest dual sport bikes out there!


With the few days I have before I have to get there I know it wont be possible to do it all off road before I get there, but I'll just consider that recon for the trip back.

I took off Monday evening trying to get a few hours in before dark!



oops ... I forgot about the snow! Wow I'm high .... over 11,000 feet!

[rickypanecatyl]

Day 1 started out with some beautiful roads in Colorado and Utah!








Some inmates led me to a great site with free downloadable topo maps of the area.

http://www.miscjunk.org/mj/mp_main.html

Basically I followed any cool looking road that was going West. When they would dead end, come to a cliff (1 did), do a U-turn or just get off course I'd fall back on the topo maps to try to get me out of the mess. Sometimes I just had to backtrack :(

















This stuff here was some pretty deep sand actually. After lots of miles I found the best way for me to ride it was to stand up on the pegs, sit on top of my milk crate with the camping gear and go about 50 mph .... I can still be lazy and stand up!!




When I came to gates like these I wondered for just a moment ... but I didin't want to turn around so I went thru ...




Notice my "kickstand" ... to get off and take a picture I just spin the wheel a few times, burry it about 6" and that's my kickstand!


[IMG]




All in all the day portion was full of lovely, easy, sandy dirt roads with a temp about 75 degrees ... BUT night time was coming and I needed to make some miles and cross some passes!

[Bigblu]

This is looking good mate . What sort of fuel consumption are you getting out of the Enduro .

[WildChildRider]

Im In!!! Have Fun be Safe and more Pics

Also after spending some time on here reading forums sounds like KTM doesn't make the most reliable bike out there.


PS I LIVE IN SAC

[GB]

Great ride!! Thanks for sharing your adventure! Keep it comin'

[crazybrit]

Great RR.

[rickypanecatyl]

I was having lots of fun, but by 5:30 pm I realized I hadn't made near enough forward progress so I found my way back to the interstate and got on somewhere near Green river, Utah. I blasted my way down to Salina, Utah where I got dinner and studied the maps.

Ok, here goes my first attempt at posting a map so I'll wait to write more to see if it really works!

Green River to Salina Utah

http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=Green+River,+UT&geocode=&dirflg=&saddr= Salina+Utah&f=d&sll=38.998642,-110.162315&sspn=0.147283,0.362549&ie=UTF8&ll=38.87 8205,-111.033325&spn=0.748356,1.922607&z=9&output=embed">
http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=Gr...9&source=embed" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map

[rickypanecatyl]

http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=Gr...6,2.900391&z=9

[rickypanecatyl]

http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=Green+River,+UT&geocode=&dirflg=&saddr= Salina+Utah&f=d&sll=38.998642,-110.162315&sspn=0.147283,0.362549&ie=UTF8&ll=38.87 536,-111.010525&spn=0.24028,1.69677&output=embed">
http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=Gr...7&source=embed" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map

[GillaFunk]

Originally Posted by rickypanecatyl

I had NO IDEA KLR's came in orage these days. Watch out; that milk crate top-case and bike color combo could potentially piss off a LOT of KTM riders.

[rickypanecatyl]

Sorry - technotard here trying to figure things out!

Anyways, while eating a late dinner in Salina and studying the maps I notice that the freeway dove way down to the south and then you had to cut back up north and then south again to hook up with US 50 which goes towards Tahoe. I decided this would be a great place to go off road and instead just go straight the way the crow flies which appeared to be only about 80 miles as oppossed to following the big roads which took about 130 miles. Here's a link to those "dips" on the map. What I wanted to do was do a straight line and start and end in the same place.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sour...6,2.900391&z=9

[DRZ Charlie]

Originally Posted by GillaFunk

[/url]
I had NO IDEA KLR's came in orage these days. Watch out; that milk crate top-case and bike color combo could potentially piss off a LOT of KTM riders.

Better to be pissed off than pissed on..unless you like that kind of thing! (for the record, I don't like that!)

Great report, keep it going.

[rickypanecatyl]

I made 1 big mistake while sitting at the restaurant. I downloaded the Nevada topo map to my gps and then continued. what I forgot was, when you download new maps on the garmin 60 series it deletes the other maps you have. To just "add" new maps you have to reselt on your computer everything else you have + the new ones you want on different drop down windows. So ... I didn't have the topo maps I actually needed. I did have about 13 way points, each about 7 miles apart that I put on the trail. I did that because it's hard to see the trail in the midst of the topo lines on the gps. Different trails had different animal themes - and this was the gajah (Malay for elephant) theme. My waypoints were simply marked gajah1, gajah2, gajah3 etc. I simply had to find my way from gajah1 to gajah2 all the way up to 13.

My Gps screen:



This is the recipe for adventure. Have a starting point, a destination, known position but no maps, trails or roads and then try to get there in a straight line deviating as little as possible.

It was dark by the time I set out - about 9:00 pm. I figured I could do the 80 miles "by the way the crow flies" (probably 120 miles in 3-4 hours. The night air was warm and I was feeling awake from a Red Bull. I started on a 2 track dirt road.

Here's a lame attempt to show it on google maps.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sour...,1.450195&z=10



In the begining the road was really easy though there were lots of off shoots and places to get lost.





My cool looking dash at night!






Then it started getting smaller and smaller and darker and darker. It also started feeling a lot colder!












It was really dark and I could only see right where my headlight was pointing. I noticed there were nice trees on my right and some funny looking realling short evergreen trees on the left side of the road. I thoght they looked kind of different from normal short trees so I stopped to take a look and realized they were not short trees, but the just the very tops of extremely massive trees to the left. Kind of gave me the willies!

It was getting colder and colder and muddier. Then I started passing patches of snow and driving thru slushy mixes of snow, ice and water.




I started looking out for the "inside corners" as that was where most of the snow was. I was fighting my way thru what seemed like about 8" deep of snow when my heart jumped, and I dropped about a foot and a half into a small 8" deep stream. What is was was the snow was was melting UNDERNEATH and there was kind of a "V" shape in the trail. On top the snow was almost completely level with a thin layer of ice that held me up for just a bit until it broke and dropped me in.

I parked the bike and walked up the trail some more and it just got worse and worse. The snow started at about 7,500 feet but the trail climbed all the way up to 9,400'.
So after 4 hours I called it quits and realized I'd have to backtrack the whole thing and then do it all on the road. I know realilzed why the road go so far up and around and then back down.

The clouds blew off and it was beautiful out there though. When they did I could see that I was inside the ring of massive snow covered mountains all around me with the nearly full moon's light reflicting off of them. I tried to capture a picture of it but none of them came close to working :(



See them snow covered mountains? That's ok ... I didn't think so ....

It's amazing how fast it is when you drive the long way! Once I got on the road I felt like I was really moving. I was freezing but there were no towns for a while and the sleeping bag I had was only good to about 45 deg. The first town I came to had a nursing home downstairs and some rooms for rent upstairs so I stayed there :)
Nothing like going to bet at 5 am in a nursing home where everyone is just waking up, hasn't seen an outsider in a while much less one with a cool motorcyle that hints of travels and adventure!

[Utah Bones]

I love this RR!

[crazybrit]

You edited the last post. What happened to the bit about the bike falling thru the snow into the creek! You're putting the A into Adventure on this one.