It's been a heavy winter this year. The Sierra's have been and are still buried in deep snow . Even the roads through the Virginia range to the east have been snow covered most of the winter.
We've were able to ride in the valley between storms and up Geiger grade a few times but it hasn't been a good winter for street bikes.
My son Ian decided it was time to get another dirt bike to replace his old XR 600 that he blew the motor on seven years ago. He picked up a Yamaha WR 400 that needed carburetor work for $ 1,800.00 . A week later Ian had it running great. I dug out my bultaco 370 that has been sitting under a tarp for 15 years. Unfortunately the fork seals are blown and the tires are shot and the seat needs to be recovered. Its going to take a little work to get it back on the road.
My brother had an old Yamaha XT 550 In his garage that hadn't run in five years and told me I should take it. I couldn't refuse. I brought it home and cleaned the carburetor and air filter ,fixed the kickstand , put in a new front inner tube and battery and it was ready to go. Only 7,400 miles on it.
I've forgotten how much fun the dirt bikes are. I rode them from 8 years old until my thirties then I road the bultaco for a couple years when my kids got dirt bikes then parked it under the tarp .
My son and I have been riding in the mountains above my house and it been a blast.
We've had to share the dirt road at times.
It took about a quarter mile but we finally got past the horses with out stampeding them down the side of the hill.
There were more waiting for me on my hill when I got home.
Some more pictures of the canyon.
We plan on doing some extended off road trips this summer.
Great pics!
Thanks for sharing nice pictures i love dirtbikes i think the old ones looks coolest.i have not ridden dirt bikes much, but had some fun on a RM250 and
huqvarna 390 or what it was and a maico .I think you can get a very good price if you are selling that bultaco.That XT550 must be great fun riding on those mountain gravel roads.
im planning to buy a XT500 the ones that came before 550 with twin rear schocks.Im a little pissed off because still can not
ride my fj. The winter has been long here this year and it is still ice and snow where i got the fj winter parked so not possible to get it on the road.The roads are snowfree
but yesterday it was snowing again .Normaly the riding season starts in beginning of March here so missed a month of riding already.
I have a few old dirtbikes, but they are not ridable :biggrin:
I remember when the Elsinore first came out. I was riding a Yamaha CT1 175 at the time and these 125 cc Hondas were leaving me in the dust.
Then came the RM monoshock bikes. Those two bikes revolutionized motocross.
My son and I took a ride up to Lagomarsino canyon east of Reno. We rode up Geiger grade to the Highlands and out Lousetown road.
The road follows a creek from the Virginia range down all the way to the I-80 corridor. The mountains are mostly volcanic rock.
Sheep herders used to graze their flocks along the creek. Their rock walls are still here. When I was a kid in the sixty's the Basque herders still grazed sheep all around Reno and much of northern Nevada.Wild horses graze the grass around the creek now.
More creek pictures.
We arrived at Lagomarsino canyon . Native American Indians made thousands of petroglyphs on the rocks walls of the canyon over a period stretching back at least ten thousand years.
At the top of the canyon there are several perches where Indians then sheep herders and now us have sat to watch the canyon below. We also found a little guy guarding the canyon. I didn't notice him until I was about two feet away.
It was only 40 degrees while we were up there I was surprised the rattlesnake was active but I always try to keep my eyes open when I'm in sunny rocky area's.
By the time we left the sun had already set and it was cooling off quickly so we were ready to get home. The off road portion of the trip was only about 15 miles in and fifteen out with another six miles of pavement each way. We made the return trip in less than fifty minutes. For how rough and rocky that road was that was pretty good time. we passed a jeep about half way back on the dirt that had left an hour before us.
Ian and I took an afternoon ride in the Virginia range above Washoe lake on June tenth. The weather was still in the high sixtys and we were getting rainstorms almost every afternoon. Very unusual for our area.the snow drifts that kept us out of even the lower hills a few weeks before were finally melted back enough to get by.
The sky's were dark with clouds but we were willing to risk the weather. Nobody else was we were by ourselves the whole trip.
We had our road first blocked by a couple hundred sheep. We didn't see a Shepard but we were afraid we would startle them if we drove through the middle of them. I haven't heard of anyone trampled to death by stampeding sheep but I didn't want to be the first.
The next road we took to get around the mountain ended up in the middle of a lake that's isn't normally there. A group of wild horses was enjoying it though.
Blocked twice we took a road we hadn't driven down before. It didn't look like it had been traveled much not surprising considering how rough it was. After about a miles there were no other tracks at all and vegetation covered the road. Further down it became deep sand then one with the creek for about a third of a mile.
Still my son with no working mirrors kept on. The creek parted with the road but it got steeper and rockier the further we went. Finally it got so steep it was hard to keep from sliding there were no places to turn around and as I suspected the road ended at the bottom of two steep hills. It was incredibly difficult to even turn the bikes around much less get started back up the hill from a dead stop. I was surprised there wasn't a pile of abandoned vehicles at the bottom. After turning the bikes around and pointing them up hill the rain started dumping. I brought a rain jacket but my only thought was to get back up that road while we still could. it was a tough ride back up the road when we finally got past the steepest part and through the creek section and the deep sand we reached a couple miles of rocky roads with hardpan clay that was now very wet on top but still hard underneath. We were sliding all over the place. The rain didn't let up the entire way home. I weighed my jacket before and after it dried and it was holding four pounds of water.
Great expedition report Travis those endurobikes look so at home in that monutain enviroment. By the way i tried to control count the sheeps to se if it actually was a couple hundred ,but gave up :biggrin:
Quote from: Old Rider on July 06, 2023, 03:36:01 PM
Great expedition report Travis those endurobikes look so at home in that monutain enviroment.
. It is amazing what we can ride over as long as we keep the momentum up. I had thought about getting a dual sport to be able to travel to areas to go off road exploring but I couldn't imagine taking a four hundred and fifty to six hundred pounds bike through the terrain we have traveled . Ian's bike is lighter and has much stiffer suspension and more ground clearance. The xt 550 is a bit of a pig at 320 lbs wet. The suspension is a little light. If I keep it moving forward it will go anywhere but if you get lazy and let off the throttle to much and let it wallow a little you can get it bouncing like a pogo stick. In the rough stuff you are basically standing on the pegs controlling the front end while the rear tire is bouncing and sliding through the ruts and over rocks. I can't see myself whipping a huge bike around like that.
The bike will do 85 on the freeway but it doesn't feel that stable above 75. It's a little light in the front so on the road if you aren't careful it will wheelie in the first three gears.The forks are so spindly that when you accelerate through the gears down the highway you can feel them twist when the front gets light. I could see driving it 100 miles on the highway for a trip but no way cross country .
After riding the dirt bike an FJ feels so smooth and powerful again.
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I have not much experience riding enduro bikes .I know they wheelie very easy i experienced that when i was young and dumb and loaned a suzuki dakar 600 for a few days .Did a wheelie and landed on my ass it was an embarrassing and little expensive experience :biggrin: Now im older and still dumb but not so dumb that i wheelie on a public road.Im trying to find a xt500 with double rear chocks here in Norway to a reasnoble price, but out of luck so far and today i have given
a impulsive offer on a little shabby 1977 kawasaki KZ1000 that i havent even had a look at (just pictures) they cost 3 times more than they do in the us here in Norway.
In early October my son and I took a ride up the old abandoned Mount Rose highway that was the route between Reno and the west shore of lake Tahoe. In the early sixty's they cut a new route up the mountain. Some parts of the old route were used for the new road but most of it was abandoned. A few sections had small groups of houses built a long it and are still maintained and connected to the new highway but most of it has deteriorated back to a dirt road. Here are some pictures of the ride.
About a third of the way up underneath an old pine tree there are some granite rocks with holes ground into them the native Indians used to grind pine nuts into flour.
The road joined the new highway for about a quarter mile then left again just above the old Tannenbaum ski resort that closed about the same time they built the new highway. There are few old homes still there. A water tank collects water from a stream to serve the houses.Some idiot decided to shoot a bunch of holes into it. The home owners had a low tech solution to repair the tank.
The road again joins the new highway for half a mile until it restarts and runs up and past the city of Reno owned ski resort called sky tavern. When I was a kid I learned to ski there. Back then it cost twenty dollars for the season. School buses would pick us up in Reno and drive us up ten weekends weather permitting. It started operation sometime in the late thirty's I think and is still teaching area kids to ski today.
From there the road travels up to a large meadow area just below the summit.
We made it up to the meadows and found the power company had opened up a road along the power line . After all the recent fires in Nevada and California caused by power lines they have decided to clear a corridor beneath the lines for safety. This area hasn't been accessible in many years. The road looked smooth but is was a thick layer of logs and chipped trees mixed with dirt. We rode down to the road and up the power line untill the road ended. Getting down to it wasn't to bad. Climbing back up to the meadow was a different story. Ian with his new Knobby's picked a good line and shot right up the hill. After three attempts with my dual purpose tires I just dug in down to the frame. We finally hooked a rope up to the front and Ian drug it as I pushed it with the engine helping up the hill back to the meadow.
The power line road.
The end of the power line road then back up to the meadows and out to the new highway.