The WBDR Through Fire and Brimstone

Last summer I reported on riding the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (WBDR), a four-day dual sport ride from my house to the Canadian border http://thegoodroads.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html.  This past winter one of my fellow motorcycle club members and old friend from Southern California called and said he had heard I had done the ride and he and a friend wanted to try it.  Would I be interested in doing it again?  What made it appealing for a second shot was that they would have a chase vehicle.  This meant I would not have to carry my clothes for four days and therefore not need to wear a backpack.  I had really come to hate that backpack last year because it closed up the vents in my jacket and made it extra hot, besides the hassle of putting it on and taking it off all the time.  So the plan was on.  The two guys from SoCal who were doing the ride were still working, so they had to plan their vacation ahead of time, and we chose the 14th through the 17th of July.  In a normal year, this would allow for the snow to have melted at the higher elevations, but should have been too early for forest fires to be a problem.  But this turned out to not be a normal year.  By July 14th there were already fires along the route, and we were entering a multi-day heat wave.  I spent the week before their arrival keeping close tabs on the fire that was most likely to impact our planned route, and working on an alternate way around it. 

After a day and a half of driving, Mike, John, and Harold arrived at my house.  Sunday evening we had a BBQ featuring Tri-tip steaks and then a lot of catching up with the past.  Monday morning we were ready to ride:

John in the center and Mike on the right. 

Harold, who is retired like me, is driving the chase van.  

The first day was from my house to Packwood and was very familiar to me.  Beside the variation in the official WBDR required by starting from my house instead of Stevenson, I had also added in some extra mileage to ride some of the more technical roads that I had found over the past three years of exploring the area.  It was a nice morning; not too warm, and the wildflowers and low clouds were keeping things scenic:

Then we came on this:

I had been by this way a couple of weeks earlier and saw they were setting up this logging operation, but they assured me they were not going to close the road.  I reminded them of this and whether or not it had anything to do with it, they said they would have the road back open if we waited 15 minutes.  So the California boys got to watch some Washington loggers in action while they moved the logs out of the way. 

Continuing on, we got some nice views of  Mt Adams on the way to lunch at Trout Lake, where Harold met us. 

By the time we got to Trout Lake, it was warming up.  The predicted temps for the whole upcoming week were not looking good.  Fortunately I had discovered an old armored shirt that I had bought years ago that I never liked because it had a lot of foam pad in it that made it really hot.  I spent a couple of hours in one evening before the ride removing all of this foam, so that I could have shoulder protection with the mesh that was left after the foam was removed.  I combined that with some elbow armor I had to make a protective suit I could wear and not need the jacket.  So this is what I wore after Trout Lake and for the rest of the ride:



I had laid out a route for Harold to drive to meet us in Packwood, but when we got there.......no Harold.  We were hot and dirty and anxious for a cold beer and a shower, but everything was in the van. 

We eventually got tired of waiting for him and rode our bikes over to the pizza place a couple of blocks away and while we were eating we saw Harold drive by in the van and called the motel to have them direct him to the pizza place.  Harold had had a long day.  The directions I gave him to get from Trout Lake to Packwood led him to a dead end on a road too narrow to turn that long van around.  he spent most of the afternoon and early evening wandering around the Gifford Pinchot until he finally figured it out.  After Harold had eaten we all headed back to the motel, but Mike didn't show for awhile and then he arrived pushing his motorcycle.  He never got it started that night and it was too dark to work on it. 

The elk herd which hangs out in Packwood that I see every time I stay there was out in force:

The next morning Mike still couldn't get the bike to run.  It had no spark, so he loaded it up in the van and John and I headed out on the route from Packwood to Ellensburg.  There is quite a bit of pavement riding hwy 12 to get east of Mt Rainier national park, but there are also some great views of the mountain, including this one from a viewpoint:

Once off of hwy 12, we started the hardest section of the whole WBDR.  Last year I made it with no problem, but this time I had a crash on a rocky uphill where my rear wheel slid into a big rut and brought me to a sudden stop, causing my chest to strike the handlebars and bruise my ribs.  (The foam I removed from my armored shirt probably would have prevented that.)   After John helped me get going again I missed a turn and ended up going up and down another bunch of rocky hills that were not part of the route.  We had to back track about 3 miles and do all the hills over again to get back on track, and after that I was wasted.  I was riding like crap after the crash and hanging on for life in the rocks rather than relaxing.  The result was blistered hands, which I haven't had since racing in the California desert on poorly suspended bikes back in the day.  The ribs bothered me the rest of the week, especially when I coughed or sneezed, or rolled over at night.  Still, I knew no ribs were broken (been there done that) because I could still breathe OK. 

By the time John and I got to Ellensburg it was over 100 degrees.  A cold shower and a colder beer never were more welcome.  That evening Mike and John went over every electrical connection on Mike's bike and finally found a bullet connector on a wire coming from the stator that was not fully seated.  It was great to hear that KTM running again.  I hated to think that Mike had driven 1000 miles to get here and spent his vacation without getting to do the ride. 

So, Wednesday morning the three amigos started out for Lake Chelan.  The route would go through the area where I knew there were road closures due to the Mill Canyon fire.  From the internet I had obtained an idea of the area of the fire and planned a route that would take us to the outskirts of Levenworth from where we could head back into the forest to get around the western edge of the fire.  However, when we got to the detour road we found:

It may look like a couple of dejected riders with their heads hanging, but we are actually looking at our GPSs trying to find some alternate route.  The first alternate was also closed:

However, my GPS, but not Mike's or John's, showed another road further along that looked like it would work.  With all three of us working together, we found a route that got us past the Mill Canyon fire to the little burg of Ardenvoir, where we got gas.  After several more hours of riding old burned out forest, we got to Lake Chelan where it was again over 100 degrees. 

The next day, Thursday, I thought we were past the fires, but as we approached the little town of Carlton where we planned to get gas, we came upon more smoke.  This turned out to be the Carlton Complex fire that was not even reported yet on the official fire reporting website.  It had started two days earlier from lightening, and the fire fighters were just starting to fight it and set up operations.  We ended up getting a lot closer to a brush/forest fire than I ever had before.  The fire was burning right down to the road we were on.  In the picture below you can see Mike and I talking to a fire supervisor after John had gone ahead and turned around to take the picture.  We had just come through the area with all the smoke in the background. 

We got to Carlton, gassed up and continued on the trail, only to see of in the distance another fire that we were heading right towards:

This got to looking worse and worse as we got closer until finally we decided to turn around and stay out of danger and the possibility of interfering with fire fighting operations.  We attempted to take hwy 20 to Okanogan, but they closed hwy 20 15 minutes before we got there and we ended up having to ride all the way back to Carlton and then to hwy 97 and north to Okanogan.  The fire was by then chasing us down the highway and two of the towns we passed through, Brewster and Pateros, burned up that evening losing almost 100 homes.  Here is a pic of the smoky air we had to ride through with fires burning on the not too distant hillsides:

After a long, hot, smoky 85 mile road ride we got back on the track at Conconully and were finally out of the fire area.  We took a road with this road sign:

 

That led to this abandoned ranch:

 

Then, in one of the few times that the GPS led us astray, we got on this "road less traveled" and had to do some backtracking:

 

After one more time (the third) of Mike having difficulty starting his bike (he needed a tow start from John this time), we got to the border crossing.  It was closed since it was after 5pm, but we were not planning on crossing anyway:

 

 

Total distance from my house to the motel Thursday night was 760 miles.  Despite the heat, fires, crash, and blisters, I enjoyed the ride and spending time with a couple of old acquaintances (Mike and Harold), and one new one (John).  Mike and John put in a lot of miles even though they are still working.  Last year they did 1500 miles in 10 days on the Tour of Idaho.  Mike has over 30,000 miles on his 2004 KTM 450 (and based on the problems he had with it, I think it is time for a new one).  They are used to having some kinds of problems pop up that they have to solve, and this ride was no exception.  Because of this, they inducted me into their "club", which has as a logo a picture of a monkey doing the nasty on a football.  They promise to send me a sticker: