CABDR Real Time Report - It's not an Epic Ride if you can still go to Walmart

(Day 4 - Beatty to Lone Pine via Eureka Dunes Continued)


OK this is where things get interesting.

I really wanted to go to the salt tram, so I used The Google to drop points along the road from Cerro Gordo to the tram

BUT

It was now 6:21pm. I had 1 hour to get there and back, and I didn't know exactly how far it was.

I did know that the ride down from Cerro Gordo was easy, and it's paved back to Lone Pine, so I just needed to be back at Cerro Gordo mine before sunset. That gave me a drop dead turn around time of 6:40pm.

No problem lets go.

Pretty:


Pretty exposed:



Pretty loose:



Not shown - pretty damn steep.

Went down into a valley and tried to climb out the other side and I got crossed up and went sideways on a steep loose climb.

Shit.

It was 6:45 and I'm wrestling a fully loaded ~600# bike backwards down a loose steep grade to the previous switchback.

Do I make another run up the hill or do I call it quits because I'm already 5 minutes past my turn around time?

I looked at the map and I was only a little farther than 1/2 way to the Salt Tram. If I could make it up that hill I would probably arrive right before sunset, then would have to find my way back in the dark.

I'm ashamed to say this, but I did the smart thing and turned around. I must be getting old....

Anyways I turned tail and made it back to Cerro Gordo at 705pm:




Shadow cast across Cerro Gordo just as I rounded the bend:




Heading down the hill:






Rolled down the hill to the pavement, and headed back to Lone Pine.

Day 5 - Lone Pine to GF's house in SoCal

It took me 4 hours to go the first 68 miles because I kept stopping for photos.


Went back thru Alabama Hills:




2 ugly faces:




Sheep Happens:




Lava:




Floating rotor:




Itty bitty dry lake:




I kept waiting for a big cloud to move so the red lava mountain would be colorful, but I got bored waiting, so you get a dull mountain.





This place is really cool:




Facing East:


Facing West:


Looking down:

(Day 5 Lone Pine to SoCal Continued)

It was time to hit the road and make up some time.

Aaaaannnnnddddd construction on the 395 of course.

Hmmm there is an opening in the fence right next to the flagman.... and the powerlines parallel the road....



BUT

They already knew what I was thinking:



Made it to GF's house without incident.


Bike is looking good:





Hot tip for washing 1260 miles of bug guts off your bike -- soak them for an hour with wet paper towels:




Besides the tip over, I had one windshield bolt vibrate loose and one bee sting.

All in all it was a remarkably smooth trip.

Until next time...
- Mitch

Nice report, pics.....great humor in your writing.....thanks again!! Look forward to the next one!!

I just found this and will read it later but wanted to say, right now, GREAT PIC's. You really do have the photo thing figured out. Thanks for taking the time and making the effort.

Ben.

CABDR Part 3: Extra Credit + Extra Stupid

Labor Day Weekend 2019

Wafer is busy doing family stuff.

Previously (late April) the hard ways between Lone Pine and Bishop were blocked due to snow.

Time to finish what went undone.



Friday: Finishing the Hard Parts of the CABDR


Put the AT in the back of the van, drove to Lone Pine.

It was 100+ degrees F out, so no I wasn’t going to slab for 5 hours in that heat.

Original plan was to camp at Alabama Hills, but it was 102 degrees down there. Screw that.

Before leaving I google earth’d a nice looking spot on BLM land at the base of the switchbacks leading to Whitney Portal. Elevation was 6400ft at the campsite, vs 4700ft in Alabama Hills.

Here’s images of the campsite, along with the coordinates. I’m specifically not putting the coordinates in text form to keep it off of google searches. ADV only:







It was still 90f at the campsite, so I unloaded and rode up to Whitney Portal at 8500ft and hung out in the shade till the sun dropped behind the mountains:



View from the switchbacks above the campsite, it is along the creek (the strip of green), but the actual campsite is around the corner:



It cooled off quickly, and sleeping in the van was nice. I was right around the lower limit of “bear elevation” so I hung what little food I had from a tree over the creek. Not exactly bear proof, but he’d have to be a pretty damn tall bear to reach it, and if he tried to take the tree down he’s end up in the creek.

No bears overnight (kind of disappointed). The sun came up and it got warm quickly, so I packed up the food and my camping gear and hit the CABDR to Manzanar and then onto Mazourka Canyon. Day 1 route:



Note how the saddlebags look at the beginning of the ride:





Mazourka canyon was a great ride - scenic, flowy, and just the right amount of technical challenge to keep things interesting. Photos:





(hit the photo limit, to be continued below)

(still in Mazourka Canyon)





Dropped into Big Pine for lunch and fuel, then continued on. It was 30 miles of twisty slab thru the canyon to the far side of the mountain, then up Wyman Creek Rd; a fun route that crosses back and forth across the creek. Nothing deep at all. I failed to find a solid footing at one point and had a 0mph tip over while looking at some old cabins.

Agua:



Cabin:




Fail:

Can I tag along?

I always enjoy your exploration.

“I'm ashamed to say this, but I did the smart thing and turned around. I must be getting old....”

I find the older I get the more my self-preservation instincts overcome my dumb decisions. There is a reason you don’t see people over a certain age falling off cliffs while taking selfies!

Great RR. I grew up riding dirt bikes out in the SoCal deserts and mountains. Your pics make me miss the riding out there. I live out east now and it’s a completely different kind of riding nor is there much public land to ride on.

Most of my tip-overs are from a lack of firm footing, combined with only a 30” inseam, at 0mph. If Dont have to put a foot down I’m usually fine. Glad to see I’m not the only one who does that.

The dirt bike riding out here is phenomenal. ADV here is good too, but holy cow the distances are really far.

I grew up riding dirt bikes in MI -- I *don't* miss the mosquitos, whoops, mud, snow, flatness, and swamps at all. I do miss my riding buddies tho...

9 outta 10 times I'm looking at something like a road sign or some cool rocks or whathave you, I decide to stop so I go to put my foot down and nothing is there. As soon as the bike starts going over I bail off, don't want to hurt myself trying to hold it up.

Don't worry, that part is coming up soon enough :)

Continued up Wyman Creek to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest This place is cool. I spent a couple of hours up top checking out the trees and the visitors center.







This is above the treeline looking north towards white mountain. May as well have been on the moon:



A slightly screwed up panorama:



This 3” tall Pinyon Pine took 3 years to grow. The ranger said that Pinyon Pine grow TWICE as fast as Bristlecone Pines:



Another cool thing at the visitors center was this timeline (sorry about the low quality). Some of these bristlecone pines were already hundreds of years old when the pyramids of Giza were being built:






Bristlecone Pine Links:

https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/tree-profile-bristlecone-pine

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/methuselah/long.html

https://blueplanetbiomes.org/bristlecone_pine.php

Nice pics.

Anyways, if you stick to the actual CABDR route you will miss most of the cool trees. Here’s the marked CABDR route:





Here’s what you should do as an absolute bare minimum, this will take you right thru one of the Bristlecone Pine Groves. It only adds 13 minutes to the original route:



Here’s what I did:




Also be aware that the BDR branches off from Silver Canyon Rd right at the top, within 100 yards of the start of the descent. It’s easy to ride right past it:






This is what it looked like on Easter weekend vs Labor Day weekend:





From there I rode down to Bishop, had a burger at the Burger Barn, then road west then south up into the mountains to camp…

Saturday (Day 2): Extra Credit


I had no real plan except to ride at lower elevation in the AM, then head up into the mountains as it warmed up. At the end of the day I would find the 395 and go south back to Lone Pine and sleep in the van again.

I found some GPS tracks from the annual Bishop Dual Sport ride. There was an adventure loop, but I wanted to avoid pavement so I just connected the dual sport loops to stay up in the mountains.

Day 2 step 1: Get to the mountains.

I followed the Bishop Gorge NW out of the valley and into the national forest.

Stolen water:




The Owens River Gorge:




Found a self propelled cement mixer in the woods. Maybe it’s a blacktop mixer, couldn’t really tell:






Dropping back down towards Tom's Place and Crowley to get fuel:




Sheep in the meadow. Surprisingly this is the same sheep guy that I saw near Fossil Falls in April, and who I’ve seen in Tehachapi too (he has a very unique water truck and camper trailer):

Headed north from Crowley Lake into the high desert. It was sandy, but manageable. The rocks were a nice change of pace:




After a while I came around a tight corner and buried myself on a steep loose hill. Doesn’t look too steep from behind or ahead:





But from the side you can kind of see the grade:




Aired way down and gave it another go. Made it about 4 more feet. Not going to work.

Wrestled the bike back around and went down to the bottom, turned around and got on it hard. There were whoops at the bottom of the hill that really slowed me down (and bottomed out the bike hard on each one) but still managed to make it up the hill with a bunch of glorious roosting. I need to buy a gopro.

Made it to the top:




Next set of hills were scenic from the bottom (shown) and nice and gnarly near the top. Didn’t stop for pictures because there was no stopping mid hill on these puppies:




Found a pretty meadow:




(to be continued)

Over the meadow and thru the woods then down the backside of the hill. I could have taken a fireroad down, but that seemed boring, so I took a two track. Problem was, as I got closer to the bottom the route got sandier and sandier and more overgrown.

The AT is not a narrow bike (extra large stylized exhaust + the Tusk racks stick out a bit more than they need to), and the panniers are another 7.5” (in theory) wider than that. Stuffed full of camping gear and tools they are definitely wider than 7.5”. Anyways, on overgrown sandy two track I spend a lot of time getting whacked by bushes. A lot. This was the most overgrown section:










The only good thing about all the bushes is that the sand is more solid. As I got further down the mountain the bushes receded, the temp got hotter (93f), and the sand got sandier. Fail:





No harm no foul, back on track and only a couple more miles of sand. Went west for a little ways then found a fireroad back up into the trees. Crossed over the ridgeline heading towards mammoth and there was a ‘no entry” sign on one of the fireroads. Took the ridgeline west a little further to the next N-S road, which also had a no entry sign. Next one over was open, so I headed south. After less than a mile I came across smoke and fire burn area, then a forest ranger. (https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6477/). He said that they had closed the road ahead. We looked at the map and there was no way south thru the forest, I had to go north to the 120 to get around the fire.

On the way out of the forest I turned around to take this photo of the smoke:



These poor panniers were in nearly new condition 36 hours ago, now they are full of gravel and brush:



That was pretty much the end of my off roading; got to the pavement, aired up the tires, and rode 2hrs 15min south to the campsite in Lone pine. The last 1.5 hours were brutal: 100-103f the whole time.

On short trips I normally carry peanut butter, honey (doesn’t need refrigeration), and bread. When I got back to camp and started unloading the bike I discovered that the bushes had smashed my honey bottle open, making a big giant sticky mess in the front left pocket. Shit. Not only is this a big mess, but I’m in bear country and my pannier is covered in honey.

I cleaned up the mess as best as I could, hung the sticky paper towels from a tree in a bag, and sprayed some windex on the panniers. Hopefully the soap smell/taste would keep the bears from chewing up my luggage. I rolled the bike back so it was adjacent to the van window, stacked a bunch of rocks on the top box (alarm system), and put a can of brake cleaner by the window of the van.

The Plan - if bear tries to eat the luggage the bike moves around, the rocks fall off the bike making a bunch of noise and wakes me up, then I roll down the window and spray the bear with brake cleaner to scare it off.

I went to bed and slept like a stone.

Stay tuned for more….

Day 3 Monday: Extra Stupid

(no bears ate my honey covered panniers overnight)


I planned on doing a short ride to the Salt Tram, going up Swansea-Cerro Gordo Road.

It was cloudy and breezy, which kept the temperatures down but kicked up a ton of dust and ruined the views.

S-CG Road started out like most DV roads:



Hey look there are some of the towers:



Hmm this is getting more difficult than your typical DV road:



OK this now qualifies as the toughest thing I’ve ridden up on my AT. I stopped here to air down the rear further, as it was spinning up (and kicking sideways) way too easily:



Higher elevation = shade + smoother 2-track:



So much for it staying smooth:





Made it up to the ridgeline. 14.2 miles of climbing (3650ft to 9250ft) in 1hr 11min:



(to be continued)

Ridgeline was smooth and fast, but with the occasional rain rut down the center of the track:



Saline Valley to the left (east), Owens Valley to the right (west):



There’s the tram station up ahead:



Saline Valley to the east:



I was going to walk the plank, but then I took a close look at the wood:



How about the north side? These boards look better:



But it is still completely unsupported underneath. No thanks:



Someone torched off the spur gear:



Looking west down the plank into Owens valley, you can see the tram towers going down the mountain:



Weathered:

Looking west again. Way across the valley are the switchbacks going up to Whitney Portal. My campsite was at the base of the mountains, just north of there:



An info board on the side of the restored cabin:



More Salt Tram info:

https://www.mtnmouse.com/california/inyob03saline_valley_salt_tram.html
https://justruns.com/test/saline-valley-salt-tram/






Parting shot:



Heading south towards Cerro Gordo. I wasn’t supposed to be in the rain rut, but slid down there from the off camber line above. Off camber grip is definitely the weak spot of the Shinko 805 tire:



The trail got a bit steep and loose:





Owens Valley again:



Exposure: