Sunday AM we all left the Panda Pump gas station and headed up Jackson Creek to get on the Bangtail Divide trail. Unfortunately Alex had a little issue with the access road.
Lincoln: So Alex, what happened to your arm?
Allen had a first aid kit and patched up our boy pretty good.
"Ummm.....honey? Yeah, so, well....I kinda crashed....."
The scene of the crime.Allen and I continued while Alex headed homeward sans shifter. We hit the trailhead and right away I run off the downhill edge of the trail at a corner and get stuck in between the embankment and a bush. Grunting and cursing followed as I hauled the XR backwards out of my predicament. It was pretty low speed and there was no damage and I got back on it. The trail is ATV wide most of the time and only a couple of tough spots, otherwise once you are up top it is pretty smooth sailing and fun. Open meadows with views higher mountain ranges in all directions.
We stopped here for lunch break and talked about how we had both done a lot of mountain biking in the past and found many of the skills transferrable to riding motorcycles off road. The brain circuits for picking lines and steering and reacting and planning are all the same. I still find it hard to deal with clutching and shifting and throttle and braking all at once when the trail gets intense though. I kind of panic sometimes and only can do like two of them at once. On a mtn bike you are coasting a lot more and don't ever need to downshift unless going uphill. Also, shifting is clutchless, you just shift....one motion instead of two. I am still learning on the moto but trying to practice as much as I can!!!
The wildflowers are out in force and it is beautiful up there! After the meadow sections it shoots into the woods for a really fun section of wider buffed out singletrack that twists and turns nicely.
View of Saddle Peak, and Bridger Bowl. That's where the goods are in the winter....New chairlift up the drainage off Saddle, and about a 20 minute hike to sick powder fields!
Allen had an issue with his shifter as well, it was cracked at the mounting collar and he needed to tighten it up every 10 or 15 miles....
We came down off Bangtail Divide on Skunk Creek Road to Brackett Creek to Flathead Pass. This is the pass looking West. I did this a few weeks ago as well.
Allen ran out of gas twice and had to tip his bike way on it's side to get gas from the other side of the tank to slosh over to the petcock side....before we made it to the gas station back in Bozeman. He was pretty happy to make it!
1 comment:
Sounds like everyone took a hit. I like the comparo between mtn. biking and moto.
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