Friday, May 28, 2021

Riding Yamaha motorcycles in the Poncha Pass BLM area with Bob W.

 A pretty good morning in terms of warm sunshine and few clouds, this would change later in the day to more cloudy conditions and some wind.  Still, not bad at all for riding.

Bob W. had brought along his 2020 Yamaha WR250R dual sport and I was riding Yagi, my TW200 dualsport.  I led Bob to the southern end of the BLM area and we rode up a couple of narrow trails which presented "interesting" conditions at times, probably leading Bob to wonder about my sanity.

Still, we made it up and back (from the point where we decided to turn around due to increasingly steep and rocky conditions) with no crashes or injuries.  After an abortive ride within the San Isabel National Forest, we tried the trail that followed Clover Creek, climbing higher and higher but finally stopped by rushing water and a look at snowy conditions up ahead.



A couple of ATVs came up behind us as we dithered in the pics above, and they'd done the further on portions before.  They're judgement as to the mud and snowy conditions led us to easily decide to turn back.

Returning back towards the main camping area, I led Bob through the remaining trails and finally stopping briefly with Mount Ouray in the background for a pic:


We returned to camp and had lunch, then around 2PM we headed out once more under increasingly overcast skies towards US Highway 285 and to the exit for Dorsey Creek Road.

First, a stop at picture point, the hill top which shows both Mt Ouray, part of the Collegiate Peaks to the north and the Sangre the Cristos in a line heading south:


Next we went up to the top of the trail and found the remainder of the "road" closed seasonally for "preservation of resources".  Heading back down a bit, we found and turned onto Dorsey Creek Road and rode it to the end.  Some steep parts, some deeply rutted parts, a lot of loose rocks, made for a challenging ride at times, but again, no crashes by either of us.  Close, but no cigar!

After wandering about for a bit on a different trail which basically was a big look of open forest land surrounded by private properties; we returned back to the west side BLM area via the entrance to FR 5325.  We rode the back ways back to the campsite, stopping only for cattle gates and to show you how the Aspen are greening up finally:


A good first day of riding with Bob.  Tomorrow, I hope to lead him through the back way to the O'Haver Lake area, bypassing the tortuous ride up Poncha Pass and down to O'Haver Lake Road exit.  We'll see how that goes.


4 comments:

CCjon said...

Spunds like great time for riding, not too hot or too cold. Perfect.

redlegsrides said...

It was pretty good CCjon, the more technical sections notwithstanding!

Blaze Our Way said...

Still beautiful!!

redlegsrides said...

Indeed Lori, Chris or you would have liked the trails we rode.....though some sections had Bob and I wondering a bit about our sanity.