Tag: braap

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2017 Klim Cow Tag

I never knew that motorcycle trail advocacy could be so much fun.  For me, trail advocacy has always meant being the boots on the ground and swinging a hand tool playing in the dirt to build or maintain trails.  Working dirt is good fun, but we all know that it’s more fun to ride a trail than build it.  Yet, the folks at Klim have figured out how to make riding trails something that directly benefits trail advocacy:  Enter Klim’s Cow Tag event.  Now in its third year, the Cow Tag event brings in riders from all over North America to ride in Klim’s backyard trail system, win great prizes, and most importantly to raise money that goes to trail advocacy groups like The Blue Ribbon Coalition and the Idaho Trail Machine.

THE EVENT

If you’re wondering how Klim, whose gear has awesome names like ‘Drifter’, ‘Badlands’, and ‘Oculus’, decided on ‘Cow Tag’ for an event name, let me explain.  The event works like this:  At registration, you’re given a map of the entire trail system that has the locations of a bunch of cow tags (literally the things you see fixed to a cow’s ear) sprinkled all over it.  During the event, your objective is to ride to as many tags as you can and record the number written on the back of the tag.  Each tag is worth a certain number of points, and the end of the day the number of points you collect determines how many raffle tickets you get.  You’re then free to put your raffle tickets in a drawing to win gear from a number of awesome brands who all support trail advocacy.

THE TRAILS

The Big Hole Mountain trail system is something you can’t truly appreciate until you sampled some of this world class single track in the Caribou Targhee National Forest.  Ribbons of single track are laced over this awesome country by folks who clearly see the world through a dirt biker’s pair of goggles.  Hundreds of miles of trails climb to rocky ridge lines with stunning views and then drop into winding canyons that look like they came straight out of Middle Earth.  Trails thread their way through tunnels in the forest and along the sides of mountains.  There are no fall zones and snowfields, log and creek (read: river) crossings and technical moves innumerable – in short it’s a singletrack paradise.

This trail system has something for everyone.  From fast and flowy to hard-enduro technical, your dream trail is out there.  The folks at Klim have graded all of the trails for the event from green to double black on a difficulty scale (think ski area trail ratings).  Greens are typically two-track trails that are open to ATV’s too.  Don’t let that fact discourage you – ATVs tend to carve out perfectly-bermed turns that are an absolute hoot on a dirtbike.  Blue trails range from fast and flowy to easier technical moves and some exposure thrown in for good flavor.  My riding buddies and I spent most of our time on blues, and we were blown away by just how many miles of awesome trail are in this system.  Single blacks are where things start to get fun, as these trails have mandatory technical moves, and depending on which way you’re going on a trail some rather fun ledges and other obstacles to climb.  Double blacks are where you’re going to find the exposure and technical moves that can mean bad things if you blow a line.  One of the double blacks we sampled was a goat track across a very steep slide slope, and it took everything four guys had to recover a bike that slipped off the trail.

THE BIG PICTURE

Klim’s Cow Tag event is the best trail advocacy experience I’ve had in my life – and I’m fortunate enough to live in a community where we get to build new dirtbike trails with the forest service every year.  Roughly 300 riders participated in this year’s event, and judging by the dusty, smiling faces I saw everywhere at the end of the day – I know everyone had a great time.  And, all of the riders that participated in the Cow Tag can feel good about the fact that not only did they have a great day of riding, but they’ve helped to make sure that places like the Big Hole Mountain trail system stay open to dirtbikes.

Trail advocacy is something that everyone who recreates outdoors needs to be involved in.  Whether you’re on two wheels or four, if you value the trails that you utilize, then you need to support or, better yet, get involved with an organization that’s working to ensure your access to our nation’s trails.  If we don’t get involved, we will only loose access to the trails and trail systems that we all love riding.  Klim has created something brilliant in the Cow Tag event – they made trail advocacy something that is a ton of fun to participate in.  They’ve found great companies and organizations to partner up with to help make this event possible, and it’s my sincere hope that other companies, clubs, and organizations will follow suit to host events like the Cow Tag all over the place.  The more folks that get involved in trail advocacy, the better the odds are that world-class trail systems like the Big Hole Mountain trail system will be open for years to come.  Do yourself a favor – if you can travel to one place to ride next year, go to the Cow Tag event.

Thanks to Adam, Kenny, Stephen, and Christian for letting me continually stop the ride to take photos.  Thanks to all of the awesome folks at Klim and all of the other organizations that put on an outstanding event for a great cause.

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AZBDR

Sometimes it pays to answer the unknown caller. Mostly, it’s underpaid and overworked solicitors telling you that you’ve won a free cruise. Ya, sure buddy. Sometimes, it’s a guy named Deuce.

“You wanna ride the AZBDR in April?”
“Uuuuh…..YES!”

And like that, tentative plans were sketched in. It would be a dicey operation, what with the possibility of heavy snow late into May, but we were gunna ride something darn it!

I have the luxury of choosing between my adventure beast, the Super Tenere, and my Austrian mistress, Katya the KTM 450 xc-w. After reading some horror stories about the massive washouts on Cherry Creek Road I opted for the latter, and with 2 months to go, set about getting my high strung singletrack slayer as comfortable as possible while loaded up with gear and buzzing down the 2-lane. Enter Primary Drive, a Rocky Mountain ATV/MC house brand, and their cheap (but good!) gearing. The 13 becomes a 15 and the 52 becomes a 48. An oil change, an air filter, and a couple turns of preload later the bike is good to go!

Okay, so how do I make that stuff fit on a bike designed to carry nothing? Enter the Giant Loop Mojave (a 35 liter drybag) and some creativity. I am not leaving my water shoes!

We had decided to leave from my house come D-day, and up rolled some other rag-tags I’d collected for this adventure, Adam and Julien. This would be my first time meeting them, let alone riding with them…what have I gotten myself into? Well, cant back out now, sometimes you’ve gotta roll with it. And roll we did, onward and outward, off into the sunset of adventure! Or in this case Forest Road 240 in the Coconino National Forrest, affectionately known as ‘the Coke’ in the USFS circles. Eventually we popped out on the ‘dual’ part of our sport; tarmac. We would cruise on this until I began to regret my decision bringing the little bike…but it sure beats a day in the office!

Scrubbing some elevation off rewarded us not only with increased temperatures, but a great pastel of wildflowers interspersed among the Saguaro. Fun fact: a Saguaro (say it with me now—seh-wahr-oh) won’t sprout it’s first ‘arm’ until 75 years old. Sometimes, they will become ‘crested’ or ‘cauliflower.’

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We still needed to get to the other side of that lake, where we were meeting up with the California boys, Deuce and Howard. Supposedly, anyway. Best laid plans of mice and men…

Soon enough, we’re scoping out sites, setting up camp, and enjoying a roaring campfire on the river’s edge. Stories were swapped, lies were told, and totems were christened. Totems named grandpa. Sometimes you’ve gotta roll with it. Time to tuck in the bikes and let the river lull us to sleep under a stunning blanket of stars.

Day Two. Why haven’t Deuce and Howard called us? Where are they? They were supposed to be meeting us here by now….oh well, we’ve got high temps and cool water, riding can wait! Finally, after a getting a fair way towards sunburned, we made contact and met some new friends. Howard and Deuce had officially arrived.

Deuce: “There’s water in Arizona?!”

Yeah, man, there’s water…we’ll be seeing more of that later. But first, the long, hot rocky Cherry Creek Road. It’s amazing to think that on the opposite side of those mountains is the I-17 and all its insanity. Road rage, truck fires, fifth wheels and road ‘gators. Not over here, though. There’s only stunning vistas, overshadowing cliffs, and some really old houses.

Without further ado, Arizona was throwing more curve balls at us, and just in time. It was HOT!

A short roll later we would come to the most dreaded of dreads. The purest of all evils, and the mother of pain. We would come to ‘the washout.’ I hear it swallowed a guy on a Honda. I’m really, really, totally, glad I left the 600lb blue PIG at home!

Howard puts his big boy pants on and shows us all how it’s done. Well, shoot. I guess it wasn’t that hard after all. Anticipation is a…well, you know.

Some smooth sailing and greener pastures brought us into the party town of Young. Funny town, Young, there’s NO pavement connecting it to the outside world. But honestly, it’s better that way.

The sun was getting low and the hours long, and we had miles to go before we slept. Time to press on, our destination was our very own lakeside property. More lies were told this night as well. Like that my sleeping bag was survivable at 15°F. Bag + liner + thermal adv gear + fire and I was still cold. Brrrr. But it was all worth it to wake up to this view.

More riding. More views. Note to self: it’s easy to trip in moto boots. Deuce I’m talking to you, so watch your step on the cliffs! It’s probably for the best we were on a ‘scenic tour’ because this would not be the time I wanted to test my trials skills at speed.

By this point in the trail I’m pretty sure we had personally run over every, single, jarring, sharp, blasted rock in Northern AZ, and we were ready for a break. Only about 60 miles to cover before we’d reach Mt. Humphrey’s in the distance and get our break…rally, boys!

Soon, we were nearing the end of this leg of the journey. We would be parting ways after the Cinder hills. These hills are a rare moonscape that, while challenging, is truly a treat to ride through, provided you stay away from the whoops…

I took a chance on four strangers. People I had never met, had barely talked to, and had met through the seediest of ways—through the dark depths the internet (ADVrider.com). We had one common interest and one common goal: we were going to ride motorcycles on as much dirt in Arizona as we could pack into a few days. Sometimes life is about stepping, nigh leaping, out of your comfort zone. I can now say I am much richer than when I started; richer in friends and richer in experiences, both things that money cannot buy. We saw country and wildlife that can be experienced no other way, and made lasting memories along the trail.