I’ve Been to the Mountain

I’ve said it before here in the ABATE magazine, Lawrence County Recreation Park is not the final step in off road riding, it is a building block that opens doors to riding around the world.
See as off road riders, we want to ride to far off places and LCRP is a great place to build the skills so you can ride to a far away land. Out siders don’t understand this, they think just riding around in circles and dust should make us happy. They don’t understand it’s not the bike, it’s what you can do on the bike, like visit far away places.
Had I not learned to ride when I was young, and built my riding talents at places like LCRP and Big Johns farm and Red Bird I could not have gone on the adventure I went on a few weeks ago. I’ll tell you about it:
Somewhere in the west, a friend of mine bought a small cabin. Over time he has gotten tired of riding all the popular trails and has been researching old trails that are legal, but forgotten. In this far away land, if the trail is not constantly maintained, it will get completely choked off by dead trees falling across it until soon it is lost. The only evidence is the blazes cut by the first people using the trail. A blaze is a rectangle cut in the bark of a tree by a axe. From one blaze you should be able to see the next blaze and that’s how trails were marked in the beginning.
Now in the real beginning these trails would have been animal trails. Trappers and Miners would have followed these trails and they are the ones who would have cut the blazes.
Most of the time a trail goes some where. Now that “Somewhere” may be long gone, but these trails would have been major transportation arteries back in the day. Miners would have to get from the mine to town or to the river or to another mine or even the brothel. Trails went every where.
So my friend had been studying the maps, kind of connecting the dots between the local small town and the mine high above in the mountains. He decided there would be a trail there, it just needed sleuthed out. He had been exploring and had found some evidence of trail and blazes and it looked like this trail should go to point B on the map.
So I was lucky enough to be there on the day he made the big push to open the last several miles. Two bikes with chain saws mounted on them and me for grunt work. Well we were way off the beaten path, way way way off the beaten path… No one had been on this trail for many many years. We were high on a mountain ridge and the trail meandered from one side to the other. On the east side it was calm and still, but when the trail crossed over to the west side of the trail the wind was blowing about 50 mph and sheets of rain was falling off in the distance. Just a couple of degrees above snowing.
The progress was slow and at times we were just guessing on the best way to get a bike through. Just because a Miner and his mule can get through, does not mean it will make good motorcycle trail. There were sections where we were on very narrow side hill trails with say 1,500 feet of exposure. Now it would not be a straight down fall and if you slipped you would probably only go a little way, but if you really messed up and your bike flipped over and gained one ounce of momentum, well it would not stop until it reached the valley floor 1,500 feet below.
Here’s an idea that will help you visualize this. Next time you are riding your street bike, see how long you can keep both tires on the white line next to the shoulder. Then pick a section with no shoulder and try it, then find a section with a 1,500 foot drop and try riding the white line. Very nerve wracking and you really need to get your head clear before tackling something like this. Then, add some 50mph winds and some rain, this is the kind of trail riding I live for.
No you can’t find any of this at LCRP, but you can build skill and nerve so when you do get a chance you can do it.
A skill you can work on at LCRP is jumping logs and the next section on our trail was just that. We were back on the narrow ridge top and you could see blazes straight ahead for a couple hundred yards, smooth sailing, except there must have been 100 trees laying across the ridge in every direction imaginable. I saw this and just went wild, I love hopping logs and took off! I was in dirt bike heaven, I hopped and jumped logs to ten minutes or more. Some times getting trapped and having to back track to figure my way out of this maze. There were logs ten inches tall to logs over three feet tall and every one of them on a tricky angle, I was very happy. Now my two partners don’t like jumping logs as much as I do so they took the time to chain saw out some of the worst ones, but man, for that short period of time I was in nirvana.
It was getting very late in the day, it had taken much more time and work to find and open this trail. See there was more than just cutting logs, we did quite a bit of rock moving and trail building just to get through. We were well past the point of no return. We had one head light between three bikes, it was 3 hours of hard riding back and we had 30 minutes of light. To ride this country in the dark would have been hellish if not impossible. A night out in 50mph winds and rain? Ummmm better keep pushing on and hard. See here is another hard ship you can’t practice for, but experience will help with, crunch time. Both chain saws were getting dull and cutting slower, we had no idea how much further to the intersection that we were only hoping existed, we didn’t actually know if this trail connected to our escape route.
I could have had a melt down pretty easily, I wanted to have a melt down, but there was no time. My two friends cut and scouted at a fierce pace, it’s serious business now.
So back to LCRP, you build your riding skills, then when you get on a big adventure you can handle it, we’ve already seen terrifying side hills, steep climbs and descents, tricky rock gardens, logs to jump by the hundreds and now the mental game of race the clock.
Lucky for me, both my companions are rock solid, experienced experts and I am honored to be with them at this point. We may spend the night out, cold and wet, but we gave it a hell of a try and I know we will be safe and make it through the night, build a fire, build a shelter, I’ve already eaten all my candy bars….. Is it too early to think about cannibalism? They both have chain saws, I’ll be the first one to go. Maybe I’ll shit my pants to keep them away….Spoil the meat… See how quick the mind can go when your are under stress?
There, off in the distance is a white tarp tent. Now that’s scary to me too, is it a hunters camp? Are hunters ever glad to see dirt bike guy’s? Ever seen the movie Deliverance? My mind just races off in another terrifying directions. I’m glad I had shit my pants.
The trail went straight to the camp so did we. It was abandoned and a mess, some one had left all their trash and junk out in the woods. We pushed on, cutting logs and searching for the life giving blazes on the trees, we must keep going to get out. Then as Bill was cutting his last log, he hollered: “Here it is!” He was standing about 5 feet from the trail we were searching for. You could not see it until you were right on top of it.
Now the new trail we were on is considered a very rugged trail but after what we had seen, it was a highway and we cruised down the mountain and got back to the cabin about 5 minutes before black. And I mean black, no moon, no stars, just low hanging clouds and black black black.
I had to use all the skills I’ve learned from riding bike my whole life, plus some skills where you just have to throw caution to the wind and keep pushing on.
The first time I rode this area several years ago, our guide put some Pink Floyd in the stereo, the David Gilmore tune went like this:
There’s no way out of here, when you come in you’re in for good…….
Wow, very poignant lyrics to where we were in our day. But we had made it home safe to big steaks and cigars not to mention warm beds. But I was left with a new feeling. I know now, that if I never get to ride my dirt bike again, I have been to the mountain and I can die a happy, accomplished rider.
So spend your time at LCRP riding, ride in all conditions ride like your life depends on it, then go some where. Seek out the highest mountain you can climb, it may not be Everest, but how far can you go? And that is what LCRP means to me

Charlie

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