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Ooopsie

Mike came into one of the corners north of Conconully a little hot, front tire hit a stray rock, and the bike lowsided pretty fast. After inventory check, Mike was a bit sore, nothing broken, but…

 

…the highway pegs punctured a hole into the left valve cover, and the bike was leaking oil.

 

After a little clean-up…

 

…an application of 60 minute JB Weld…

 

…wildflower gazing…

 

…a visit with these two fine gentlemen from West Seattle…
…hammering on the dented panniers with a BK2…

 

…and otherwise enjoying the air at 6314 feet…

 

…we were back in motion.

 

And the patch lasted great the rest of the trip. Mike does good work.

Methow – Conconully

Camped at Rock Creek Campground, which had one of the cleanest WA State standard issue bathrooms we’ve ever seen. That’s the Nemo Morpho 1P on the left, and the latest edition Redverz on the right.


Descent into Ruby


End of the dirt section in Ruby


Slow down when you see cow pies. This is north of Conconully. We actually started to herd the cows with bikes further north, which was scary. Will share video footage of that later.


Giddy-yap-yap-yap

Taken somewhere along the Slide Ridge segment, the area is rebounding after forest fires



This is a Photosynth panorama of the Slide Ridge area…the view is looking east over the road we just passed through. The synth will look better if you use the widget control to go full screen.

You can just see Mike on the upper right on the road through the trees.


Good example of the typical road conditions along the trail. I didn’t capture any of the treacherous stuff on my camera, we did grab some video footage which I’ll share in a later post.


Northward Ho!

One year passes since we rode the southern part of the WABDR…

With the first leg explored and recorded for posterity, we went after the second half in this past August. Just let’s just pile on to the original thread and pick up where we left off.

Start with the big rock on the left in Cashmere, and the little rocks show where we spent the night.


Say hi to Mike


And the fun begins. Truth be told, this part wasn’t too bad, even on Tourances.


I had a hard time on this section, dropped the bike twice. :0 All of the pre-ride guidance recommends knobby tires. I did the second leg with Tourances on the front and back, so it’s doable. You’ll just wish you had put knobbies on, I would have enjoyed those sandy bits a little more. Nevertheless, I only dropped the bike 4 times across the three days.


The intrepid explorers


Our view of what’s left of the forest fires. Lots o’ smoke.


We had hoped to make it to 25 Mile State Park the first night, we were running out of daylight and energy so anchored here for night one.


And we were short of water…fortunately, it drizzled over night, and we captured just enough to make morning coffee.