A couple of riders met at my house in Marietta and we headed off. It was pretty cold as we started of but warmed up as we went along. We picked up more riders at various spots along our route. I think we ended up with 11 riders, mostly on KLR650s. Most of the route getting to the mountains was paved and what little dirt we ride was easy.
A couple of pics I took on the way:
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Then we got to the start of FS42 where the real dual sporting would begin.
So there was a little snow on the ground in the pic above. No big deal. We'll continue on, what could go wrong?
So we headed up the road with an emphasis on the word UP. As we went up to higher elevation we got into more snow.
OK, there was a little bit of snow on the ground. That makes for good pictures, no big deal. As you can see there were some narrow tires tracks where it was more mud than snow. We just rode in the tire tracks.........Until they disappeared..
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Now it was getting slick but things were still going good until we got pulled over for speeding
Well OK, maybe not. We just stopped and talked to the Forest Ranger. On of the guys in the group had actually been given a ticket by this ranger at an earlier date.
As we rode along we got pretty strung out. Some riders were faster than others. We had some experienced dirt riders as well as some noobs had had done very little dual sport or group riding before. Some people were falling down
One guy fell over and broke his clutch lever. Luckily another rider had a spare. So he installed it, rode a short distance and
He broke the new clutch lever. This happened well behind me. I was stopped waiting for the rest of the group when one of them pulled up and asked if anyone had a clutch lever. It just so happened that I always carried a spare clutch and brake lever so I rode back and we installed it on the guys KLR. I told him if he wanted to do any more falling he needed to fall on the right side since I had spare brake lever
He didn't listen and fell again on the left side
Luckily he didn't break the lever.
We continued on. We took a left at the first intersection and headed down the mountain. What should have been a 20 minute ride took over 2 hours. We stopped at a fish Hatchery and took a break. The plan after this was to ride to TWO for lunch but some people headed off for home. It had already been a long and tiring days. I think some of us rode to TWO for lunch and then rode back home but to be honest, I don't remember much of the ride after the fish hatchery. The two+ hours in the snow on the other hand is a ride I will never forget. I doubt anyone on that ride will forget it. If the conditions had been nice and dry we would have done a lot more riding but I doubt that it would have been nearly as memorable.