Went up to McCall Idaho yesterday to help scope out the up and comming Big Cat Adventure DS rally's "easy" loop. Two of the riders were riding double, so you can see how easy it was. Here is Butch Freeman, with his new bright blue GO!!!!! KTM, and Earnie Lombard (sp?) and his wife on their Trasalp. The Green Tiger is mine. Butch will be leading the expert, techical loop, and here is my warning. This man is an animal. If you think you are an expert, think again before taking his loop. I have ridden some of it on my Husaberg, and while it was fairly easy on the dirtbike (high mountain single track), it would be brutal on a heavy DS... We were riding pretty hard (at least Butch and I), so my photos are sparce. Here is the road into Yellow Pine, Idaho. After leaving McCall, you climb up Lick Creek road, over the summit, to this view. Our first stop in Yellow Pine, roughly 50ish miles into the loop. The local golf course's golf cart. Here is the rest of the crew, of wich I remember NO names.. Damn college years A fairly new 1150gs and a KLR join the group. Random scenery shots: Yes, there is still snow here. My Tiger, with balding Tourances did not like the next snow drift that I had to bust through. Sorry no photos, was too busy digging a 500lb Tiger out of a 3' deep drift. More random scenery. We are up above Warren Idaho. This road has been closed for the last 20+ years do to a hill and creek deciding to totally reroute itslef in one of those 100 year storms. It was finally repaired last year. But it was obvious that it was a seldom used road. At the summit, Butch and I bid our good by's to the rest of the group. It was already mid afternoon and we had an additional 200-250 miles of dirt to cover to get back to Boise before dark. We had to rock and roll pretty hard. Tiger, don't fail me now.... How on earth do I get these in my back yard???? South fork of the Salmon River... "River of No Return". It's getting late in the day. This is heading south of McCall on a dirt route back to Boise, that Butch insisted that he knew. It ended up doubling back around and dumping us back into New Medows, not far from McCall. This is what I get from following one of those KTM riders... Again, remember, he is leading the Technical loop.... After a long reroute, we are almost back home. This concludes the Sasquatch ramblings about the trip. Hope to see a bunch of you at the rally.
Howdy Sasquatch! Looks like a grand time up in the hills. I've been in Le Bois since Thursday, but had to fly up out of D-town on short notice so I didn't have my Tiger. Dayum! It would have been great to meet you up in McCall. By the way, since I want to eventually retire there, quit posting such great photos of the place. Pretty soon everyone is gonna think it's nice up there, and the place will be full of Californians or somthing?!!! Fly back to Denver tomorrow, and hope I can get my bike out for a quick stretch. It's been a L O N G weekend, and I need to destress with a little throttle therapy. Wish I'd been there!
That's a nice ride. I've done some of that ride myself, in fact took similar pics on the road coming down into Yellow Pine in just about that same spot. We headed from there up Johnson Creek and then took a pretty tough route up and over Trout Creek Pass, then down into the Warm Lake area and out to Cascade to get some fuel. Seems like more snow than I've seen up there, but then I am usually there in August. NoGuz in NoCal