We woke up, had breakfast and were on the move from our camp at 8,000′. We took a short trip to find the Trinity Lookout tower and decided against making the ride up to the tower. The guy that mans the tower said last year was the first time he saw motorcycles up there, ever. Those guys were pros. So we figured we wouldn’t fare as well. Tough to see the tower in the pic, but once you took the road over that you can see, the ride is straight up on loose rock.
Our next challenge was the toughest yet. Pics don’t do it justice so I won’t post them. Think road closed to cars, not maintained, huge ruts and sand the whole way up. Certainly fun, but nerve racking. This led us to the 50″ bridge. You can figure out why it’s called that from the pic of Mark crossing.
From here things went south. Our intended route was closed due to fires.
So we found another route. Also closed. Then another, also closed. This took us to Atlanta, which as Mark noted was a dead end. Another mining town in the middle of nowhere.
We had to backtrack and reroute AGAIN. We finally found a route to Cascade, ID. Thinking the road seemed soft, Mark said ‘I think they must be grading the road’. Sure enough, within a mile, here comes the road grader. Pushing dirt, leaving a tall berm and about 2 foot for us to ride in. This worked for several miles. As I was rounding a corner I saw Mark struggling in deep soft dirt. Figuring I could find a better path I went into the corner lower than Mark, spun my backend around and dropped the bike. I hit the horn and Mark quickly came running to help out. Luckily I was fine and got the bike back up myself much to Marks chagrin. Damage? None for me, but my pannier took a good shot and is pretty wonky now.
From there, it was road to Cascade. Beautiful, cold, tired. We wrapped up 11 hours of riding and stayed in a nice 80s hotel where I was certain we’d see the wedding singer.
2geeks2bikes 