Ride, 03-20-08 Nelson

[ybrace]

There will be a ride at Nelson (Las Vegas area of Nevada) on Thursday 03/20/08. We will be meeting at the Railroad Pass Casino at 8:30 AM for breakfast. We will be leaving the casino at 9:30 AM and will be parking at the slab. There are 4 people confirmed for this ride and we hope to have a couple more. It will be a fast paced ride with expert riders. We maybe doing a new (to me) waterfall section that Doug and I discovered last weekend along with some killer single track. We will be riding for 4 to 6 hours so bring a lunch, drinks and extra fuel. I look forward to riding with all of you.

[ybrace]

This was a kind of a last minute ride in honor of Dave’s friend Steve from Wisconsin who flew out to ride the desert. There were 7 of us on this ride ( Steve M, Doug, KLR John, Dave, Steve (Dave’s friend), Jason and myself) even though we lost Jason early into the ride because he was on a DRZ 400 with a large fuel tank and was struggling a little with some of the technical stuff early on. He had a throttle cable break at the beginning of the new waterfall section that Doug and I found the week prior so he decided to bug out. We got him back to the road and he went home to repair his bike. It was for the best because the stuff we were doing this day would have been a little to much for that bike. We continued up this new section and I think everyone enjoyed it. KLR John had a problem with is bike overheating due to the slow pace we had through this section. We popped out of the ravine onto a single track heading toward the radar dome. We stopped to let John’s bike cool off and replenish the liquids in the radiator. At this time Dave and his friend Steve were ready to bug out so we all went back to the trucks. We took a break for a bit them Steve Makar, KLR John, Doug and I took the dirt road back to the place where we had left off. I wanted to explore this single track trail that I had seen from the dirt road so we headed up the hill and I got off balance and took a hard spill. Ouch. After dusting myself off we continued up the single track and dropped into a canyon and started down the wash. We came to an impassable (for me) section and decided to go around so we made a trail around it and continued down the wash. We soon came to an interesting rock shelf / waterfall / bee hive? I’m mot sure what you would call it other then bad. Well KLR John wanted the challenge so he went down it. His former trials experience really shows when you go to attack something like this. He made it down only to go 50 feet and was faced with a 10’ drop and a million bees. With no way out he had to come back. There was no way to ride back up so Steve and I help him lift the bike out. We climbed out of that canyon and ran the ridge to a point where we could get to the other side. Once on the other side we rode the ridge headed West until we crossed a trail. At this point everyone was getting tired so we decided to head back. We rode some interesting trails back. Steve and John took video and Doug took pictures. I forgot my camera again. All in all everyone had a great ride. This ride was technical with fast paced sections and every rider that showed up is an expert in my book. Thanks guys for another great ride. Life doesn’t get any better then this.

I posted the pictures that Doug took on my Photobucket account located here: http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r43/ybracing/03-20-08%20Ride/

I posted a ride report on Steve Makar’s site located here: http://www.goridingnow.com/riding/showthread.php?t=105

If you watch this site he will probably post the videos that he took.