The WBDR in One Gulp

Last year I rode the first two days of the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (WBDR) and reported on that ride in this post: http://www.thegoodroads.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-09-22T19:57:00-07:00&max-results=7.  I wanted to do the next two days later in the year with my nephew Jon, but forest fires closed the route.

To recap, the WBDR is a mostly off road tour of Washington from the Oregon state line to the Canadian border.  It goes generally through national forests and state lands at high elevations.  A good map of the route can be seen at this website: http://www.backcountrydiscoveryroutes.com/WABDR.  It is promoted as a six day ride, but I knew that by traveling light on an off-road oriented bike and staying in motels, it could be done in four days.

I have been obsessed with finishing this ride.  I also have felt bad about skipping one of the so-called "difficult" sections on my ride last year, when I was riding by myself and was hot, tired, and out of water before I got to the section.  I found a riding partner this summer who I knew was an excellent rider, who also wanted to do the ride, so we made plans to do it.  He had not done any of the route, so he wanted to start from the beginning and do the whole thing.

Since I have already described the first day in the post mentioned above, I won't spend too much time on that part.  However, the area covered in the first day's ride has become very familiar to me because I often take day rides over there and have been exploring and finding more good roads.  I included some of these roads in modifying the official route, and we also started from our houses instead of the official start in Stevenson, so that the first day to Packwood was 210 miles instead of the official distance of 110 miles or so.

Here is a pic of me getting ready to leave......all clean and spiffy:

We had several fortunate things happen on this trip, and one of them which benefited us the whole way was that it had been raining across central and western Washington in the week before we left, and that made for a pretty dust-free ride for the following rider.  Here is a short video of a part of the first day's ride that shows the mud puddles had plenty of water:

So, the first day was pretty uneventful, but tiring to my riding partner who was on a KTM which have notoriously hard seats, so it was a long day for him.  Here is a picture of him, by the way.  Jim is 75 years old, so at 72, I may still have some riding time left:

Jim McCllelan

Notice the DIY hand guards made from bleach bottles.......an $8000 motorcycle with redneck accessories.

The second day out of Packwood started poorly.  We had a long road ride to the start of the dirt section, but shortly after the first graded road we began a section of really gnarly jeep trails that seemed to have many optional paths to get around bogs and ruts.  It was in this section that Jim apparently took one option while I took another, and we got separated.  I ended up following a marked trail that may have been a snowmobile trail as there were few tracks and I was sometimes riding through tall grass and mud.  However, I could see on my GPS that the planned route was just off to the side a little ways and I felt I would soon merge back onto it.  When I did, though, Jim was nowhere to be seen.  I assumed, since I was going so slow through the bogs, that he was ahead of me.  I kept going and kept going and began to wonder if somehow he was behind me, but had no way to know for sure.  I stopped for awhile but worried that if he was ahead of me we would be getting even more separated.  Eventually I got to the first section marked "difficult" on the WBDR map.  It was a loose, rocky uphill that I had done last year and this time it seemed easier.  I was riding a long time by myself and approaching the second difficult section which I knew was worse and was the one I bypassed last year.  I stopped at a section of paved road and spent some more time waiting and also called Jim's wife to see if he had checked in with her, but he had not.  Then, just before the hardest part, Jim caught up with me.  Turns out, he had waited for me when we first separated, and he was behind me the whole time.  He had met a guy in a truck who had seen me so he knew he had to hustle and catch up.  We ended up riding the difficult section together, which was a big relief for me. It turned out to be not so bad and I made it with no problems.  I guess the reputation of the section is based  on the experiences of less skilled riders or riders on bigger adventure style bikes with camping gear.  My little KLX 250 is perfect for that kind of riding, though.  

BUT, after getting by the hard stuff I was storming along heading into Ellensberg when I hit a rock I didn't see at high speed and got a pinch flat in the rear tire.  I should have stopped and patched it, but Jim was ahead of me and he had a can of flat fix that he swore would fix any flat.  By trying to continue on, I ended up spinning the tire on the rim and ripping the valve stem out of the tube.  The bike became un-rideable.  I have ridden on flat tires on dirt bike before, but this was much worse......probably because the tire had more flexible sidewalls, or maybe because I had no rim locks in.  Here is a pic of me slewing sideways at 5 mph trying to stay upright: 

I was hoping to make it to Ellensberg, but the effort of riding on that flat was wearing me out.  And it was hot.  I finally asked Jim to ride into Ellensberg to get a new tube while I worked on getting the wheel off.  The first problem to solve was finding a way to get the wheel off the ground far enough to remove it.  There were no trees or logs around, but I found a couple of rocks and managed to hoist it up enough.

Meanwhile, Jim was having some luck.  He got onto pavement and found a guy on a road bike at a stop sign who volunteered to lead him to the local bike shop.  Then when he pulled into the shop parking lot, a sheriff deputy pulled in behind him.  Jim has faked his street legal-ness by putting the plate from his Suzuki road bike onto the KTM.  If the sheriff checked the plate numbers Jim's bike might have gotten confiscated, but the sheriff just wanted to talk about bikes.  The next lucky event was that Jim decided maybe he better get gas before heading back out to meet me.  He ended up putting 2.3 gallons in his 2.4 gallon tank.  Had he run out on the way back to me we would have both been stranded.

When he got back to me, we installed the new tube and aired it up enough with the bicycle pump I carry for me to ride the rest of the way into Ellensberg.  It was about 95 degrees there, and this is what i looked like when we checked into the motel:

Hot, tired, and very dehydrated, but after a cold shower and a cold beer and I was good to go.  The second day was only 135 miles, but the hardest day.

The third day, which was all new territory to me, was from Ellensberg to Lake Chelan.  It consisted of great tracks through lots of burned-out forest, wonderful views and high altitude.  It even had a water crossing:

There were still some forest fires around and the air was a little smokey as can be seen in this pic.  The backpack carried my after-ride shoes and clothes for four days.  Just like last year, I ended up hating that thing because it tended to close up my jacket vents and made it hotter.  You might wonder why I wear the jacket if it is so hot.  The reason is that the jacket is armored in the elbows and shoulders and normally vents well enough when moving.

Shortly before we got to Lake Chelan we came to another section where there was a bypass route.  This one was due to the route being "overgrown but passable".  That's a good description.  Here is the video:

There was a Lexus 4WD SUV that we passed before this section and they claimed they were going to use it.  If so, they probably flattened a lot of the bushes and would make it easier for the next bikes.

We took a break at a scenic stream crossing shortly afterward and maybe you can see the bloody right hand from getting smacked by one of the branches:

And this is Jim's new helmet decor:

This pic shows Lake Chelan in the distance.  The day ended with 188 miles:

The last day between Lake Chelan and the Canadian border was cooler with some rain towards the end. One of the interesting places we came to was the town site of the town of Ruby.  I'll let the sign tell the story:

Looking up and down main street now, this is the view:

 We  had some route following difficulties on this day.  Jim claimed it went one way, and I thought it went another.  The first time it happened, we followed Jim's route and this is what we got into:

There are probably 100 people or more who travel the WBDR during the summer.  Does this look like the route they follow?  I was ready to turn around, but this is no problem for a rider of Jim's capability, so we went around this deadfall and came to another which had us doing some true off roading:

The next time we disagreed, Jim's route led us to a gated path that looked like it hadn't been used for years and I balked, so we went my way, which was more like the roads we had been on.  Then it happened one more time, and this time I admit Jim was right.  I would have missed the section of road called "skull and Crossbones", which I had read about on the official route map.  The name sounds ominous, but the road was not difficult.  It might have been named that for an abandoned ranch we passed which perhaps had had a tragic event.

By this time Jim was spending a lot of time standing on the pegs to avoid that hard KTM seat.  In one smooth section with no dust, I got a chance to ride very close to him and take this video:

Eventually, after passing through some rain showers, we got to the Nighthawk border crossing, but of course we didn't actually go into Canada because it is such a hassle getting back nowadays.

The day ended with 187 miles for a total of 720 miles.  A great ride on Good Roads, and a memorable adventure.

And how did we get home?  Jim had a friend waiting with his van and trailer in nearby Oroville, so thankfully we didn't have to spend two days droning down the highway on dirt bikes.