Black Rock Desert: Escape!

Looking out from Thomas Fox's garage, the outside world seemed harsh and unforgiving.  I'm sure he felt that way more than once, while homesteading this land in the early 1900's.  There are no traces left of the house.  So, evidently, he put more stock into protecting his wheels - his means of escape!  I can understand that.

According my most detailed map, Jonathan and I had about five miles left to make our own escape from High Rock Canyon.  After battling through the deep water, sand, and silt, we were pretty exhausted.  The short break here had done us good, though, and we were as ready as we were going to get to tackle whatever obstacles were left on the trail.

Saddle up!

Walking around my bike to get back on, I noticed this, hanging from the rear of the right side pannier - my luggage keys!  I hadn't gotten into the box all day, so they'd been there since leaving the ranch - 15 extremely rough miles ago!  I do have an extra set, zipped up in my jacket, so losing the keys would not be a major issue.  The scary part was that I'd never turned the lock.  For that whole time, the lid was not secured to the box, and the box itself was not secured to the bike!  I can't believe the whole thing didn't bounce off somewhere, or get ripped off by the brush.

That would have been a hard-learned lesson.

After we left the garage, the path was firm and easy for about a quarter-mile.  Then, I abruptly found myself stalled out, and pointed the wrong direction - perpendicular to the trail!

I'd begun traversing yet another loose cobble section, when my rear tire overturned a particularly large one that threw the back end of the bike wildly to the left.  Fortunately, the trail here was unusually wide and level, and I had little trouble getting pointed in the correct direction again.

Next, it was Jonathan's turn to have a bit of trouble.  But, as is often the case, the scariest-looking parts don't end up on 'film'.  You're too focused on just getting through!

It began with a matter-of-fact announcement over my in-helmet com. system, "I'm down."  I sped up immediately to make time on the straight, then slowed way down for a blind corner, not knowing exactly where I'd catch up with my friend.

Just before I spotted him, he'd already followed up with, "OK, I'm up again."  That made me feel much better, of course.  He was about 100 feet up a rock-strewn hill, standing by the bike, holding it up.  Parking the KTM at the bottom, I walked up and grabbed the KLR, as there was no way to put the kickstand down in the severely rutted portion of trail.  That gave Jonathan a chance to finish his personal damage assessment, while I began looking over my side of the bike.

Jonathan seemed whole, and there were no levers missing, and no obviously bent steel.  In fact, the bike (and rider) had not really gone over very far.  They were chugging along the right side wall of a deeply entrenched section, when the rear wheel 'skipped out' to the left.  Sound familiar? The duo was tossed only a few degrees from vertical, over onto the rather soft bank - and the motor never stalled.

Everything looked good to go, but there was only one way to find out.  I offered to ride the KLR to the top of the hill, and tossed my leg over the seat.  Once I got it moving again, and through the largest boulders, it was clear that no serious damage had been done.  I parked it as soon as the terrain leveled off, and walked back towards the KTM.

Now it was the big bike's turn.  The spot that had fouled Jonathan was pretty technical.  You had to thread your way between a large boulder on the left, and a nasty ditch on the right.

I decided to avoid the entire situation, by taking to the air!!

No, not really.  That's a professional rider at my bike's official press launch.  I could do that if I wanted to, though.  If I didn't care about the landing.

But back to our story.

With the benefit of learning from Jonathan's mistake, I was able get past his trouble spot - a whole 10 feet past it.  Somehow, I ended up with my rear wheel on top of a different boulder, perched above the ditch, mentioned earlier.  I had not kept up enough momentum during my climb, and was balancing at a stand-still, with no way of reaching ground with either foot.  This could last only another second at best, before gravity took over and brought man and machine crashing to earth.

My only hope was to hit the throttle, jump off the rock, and stick the landing.

It worked!

I killed the motor in the process, but was able to get a foot down, and take a breather before continuing up the hill.

But the photo above is not from that story.  On this one, I chickened out and called for reinforcements.  Jonathan had made it safely through this obstacle, a 6-foot deep v-shaped rut, with a tree reaching out over the trail.  In the process though, he'd knocked a soccer ball-sized rock into the bottom of the 'V', which I saw no way around.  The trench was so narrow I couldn't get the stand down, either, so it was my turn to call for help on the com.  So glad I brought him along!

It took a few minutes for Jonathan to find a parking spot himself, then walk back down to me.  Once on site, he handled the rock with little problem, and I ducked behind my windscreen and blasted through the tree.

It was my turn to lead, so he waited where he'd stopped, and let me pass.

In truth, I didn't know how many more of these loose, rocky climbs I could handle.  We paused to catch our breath at the bottom and top of each one, but every time, the recovery period took longer.

We were wearing out fast.

How much longer could this go on?

And then, just as the canyon walls disappeared, I caught a green flash out of the corner of my eye. 

It was a gate!  An open gate, half hidden in the brush, but painted bright green, just like the one at the entrance to the trail.  We'd made it out!

The route immediately got better, though not much wider.  It was another mile before we passed this sign, identical to the one now far below us.  It was official.  We'd survived High Rock Canyon!

We still had over 20 miles to get back to the pavement, but the worst was obviously behind us.  The combination of jubilant triumph, satisfaction, and relief is hard to adequately explain.  But it was sufficient - for me, anyway - to immediately justify all the angst, suffering, and brief moments of terror.

I'm sure Jonathan felt the same way - pretty sure.  I'll find out next year, when I ask him to go to Utah with me.  For now though, let's just keep those plans under wraps - until the time is right.

Black Rock Desert: High Rock Canyon

Our decision to take the right fork, back on the flats, appeared to be the correct one.  It brought us closer to the mountains, and into some more interesting terrain.

According to the map, we must be entering Fly Canyon.  It should take us down into another large valley, where we would skirt the north edge of High Rock Lake.  So far, so good.

At the bottom of this last steady grade, we crossed a broad, flat area, that had obviously been wet in the winter.  We could just see a large empty expanse to the south.  Assuming that to be the now dry lake, we figured we were on the right track.  These 'two-track' roads were fast going and loads of fun - as long as we spotted the loose sand traps soon enough to slow down for them.

To help with that, the in-helmet communicators were really nice to have.  We took turns in the lead, calling out the bad spots to the rider behind.  That way we didn't both have to be quite so focused 100% of the time.  If you were following, you could relax a bit, and look around at the ruggedly beautiful surroundings.

But then we came to another unmarked junction.  This time, the most well traveled track appeared to be heading south.  Now, I knew there was a major county road in that direction, but that our chosen path was generally northwest.  Why take the easy route?  Defying the GPS's protestations, we kept to the right.  We also relied here on a bit of information we gleaned back at breakfast, "When you get to the lake, head for the mouth of the canyon.  You can see it from there."

Sure enough, in a couple of miles we spotted an open steel gate and a nice full-color sign!  High Rock Canyon is managed by the BLM and closes for a few months each spring to protect nesting raptors and big horn sheep - hence, the gate.

Originally an Indian trail, in the 1850's the Applegate brothers led immigrants to Oregon this way.  It was also a route that gold prospectors took to California.

I'd stumbled upon reports about this remote Jeep trail years ago, and it's been on my list ever since.  I passed fairly close to the north end of it once, on a trip to the east coast, thinking it might be a nice diversion from the pavement.  On the morning I could have gone, however, I decided I'd better make time and stay on the pavement.

I could already tell that skipping it that day was the right choice.  Unless things drastically improved, this was going to be slow going!

The path was very narrow, with tall, stiff sage brush on each side.  Because of the deep loose silt, we pretty much had to stay in the bottom of either the left or right wheel track.  That meant scratching up my beautiful new aluminum panniers. [Gentle Sobbing]  But part of the reason for this trip was to break in the new bike.  I'd been far too concerned with keeping it pristine up in Canada - one of the factors which eventually led to my turning back.

But the surface did get a little better, once we started climbing out of the valley.  Traction here was good, and we could relax and speed up a bit.  I came around the corner and saw Jonathan taking this photo of me.  But why had he stopped?

Ah yes - to take a picture of what lay ahead!  This is similar to one of the shots I'd seen online, that got me interested in this trail in the first place.  It was pretty exciting to finally be here!

But that excitement soon turned into, "What have we gotten ourselves into?"  As is always the case, this rocky hill was a LOT worse in reality than it looks like on 'film'.  Sure, on a light-weight 250 cc dirt bike, it would be a ton of easy fun!  But our bikes, designed to work well on the street, and still be somewhat competent in the dirt - are far from light-weights.

Enough fretting.  Here we go!!

I don't remember who went first on that one, but somehow we both made it up to the top!  There, we found a rare wide spot in the trail - big enough to safely park the bikes, get off, and take a well-deserved break.

The day was warming up a bit by this time - no more worry about rain.  But hopefully we'd brought enough water!

After a drink and a snack, we surveyed our surroundings.  That vertical gap in the rock wall up ahead looked interesting.  Though we were generally heading up-canyon towards higher ground in California, we'd obviously be going down through that first.  And often, down is trickier on a bike than up.  Better get going.

Well, before we had to deal with any loose, steep downhill, we found ourselves confronted with something even worse!  At the base of that shear rock wall we'd noticed from the hilltop was a spring that had completely flooded the road.

What wasn't water was strewn with huge boulders - there was no way around.  I dismounted and waded through the entire length of the obstacle to try and find the best route through.  It was bad.  Some parts were nearly as deep as my knees, but the shallower areas were hiding a jumble of loose, slippery rocks.

This was going to be tough.

What we'd thought was the "big water crossing" we were warned about at the ranch, had just been the opening act.  This must surely be the main event.

Back on the bike, I still didn't really have a plan.  I sat there for a minute, thinking this might be the last moment of unblemished perfection the mighty 1290 would ever know.  Deep breath.  Exhale slowwwly.  And let out the clutch.

It wasn't pretty.  I frantically thrust my foot into the water more than once, but I made it without dropping and submerging my rather expensive new bike.

Watching me struggle from behind, Jonathan decided he'd rather not be the one to put an abrupt end to my much older bike's illustrious career.  "And besides," he pointed out, "Now that you've done it once, the smaller bike will be a piece of cake!" - or something to that effect.

I trudged back through the muck once more and threw a leg over the KLR.  This time, I did it a bit differently, starting on the same side, but then switching to the left mid stream - to avoid the deepest hole.  The transition over the hump in the middle was difficult, but once across, the going was better.

With all four of us safely through, we knew two things for certain.  One, waterproof boots are not at all effective, once you enter water above their top edge.  And two, come what may up ahead on the trail, we were NOT going back the way we came!

Oh, and one more.  We knew at least the water crossings were behind us now.

But they weren't.

Only minutes later, we came upon this little gem, at the bottom of a steep, loose hill.  Stopping here, at the top, we walked down to check it out.  At the water's edge, the road dropped vertically about a foot, but the other side appeared to be OK.  It looked VERY deep.  You couldn't see the bottom anywhere.

Yet again, I plunged in and made my way across on foot.  Unlike the last one, there were no hidden boulders, but instead the bottom consisted of several inches of mucky silt.  And the water was even deeper!  On the plus side, the hole wasn't as long, and beneath the silt layer, there seemed to be a firmer foundation.

So the plan here was simple.  Drop carefully into the water, then hit the gas and power through to the other side.  Without the rocks, finesse would not be necessary, but momentum to get through the mud certainly would be.

This time, execution went more according to plan.  When the bikes dropped into the deepest hole, however, the few inches of mud seemed to increase dramatically, and even more throttle was desperately applied - but we made it!

Shortly after that, the canyon opened up, and we spotted a historic stone structure.  It was the Fox Homestead garage!  According to the map, that meant we were about two thirds of the way up the 16-mile trail.  I don't know why we were so excited, but we obviously were.  Maybe it was just that we'd passed the half-way point, or the feeling that surely if a Model T Ford had made it down the canyon this far in 1916, we could make it out in 2018!

I'd hoped to be all the way to Cedarville, CA by now.  It was just past mid-day.  We were only averaging about 3 miles per hour.

But in the cool shade of the 102 year old stone building, all was well.  We drank up, and even finished off the cookies my wife had baked for us before we left.

I knew it was very likely there would still be some challenging sections left.  A lot can happen in five miles of rough trail.  But the tops of the canyon walls looked so close!  Surely the worst was behind us.